How's that for a mixed metaphor? Levity aside, it looks as if putting the squeeze on Senate Democrats who won't come out strongly for public option health insurance is beginning to show some results! Get on the bandwagon in your state. We're talking numbers today, and what those numbers mean in my state.
The count is up 35 Democratic senator committed to voting "yes" for the public option in reconciliation. (Go to the link to find out where your state's Democratic senators stand.) It seems that new supporters have stopped signing Senator Bennet's letter. Those who are being cajoled into openly supporting the effort are now issuing guarded statements. Swell. Still, it's better than nothing. The important fact to emerge is that there is movement in the right direction. Having 35 votes in the bag now, including Reid, is a lot closer than the 16 or so that we started with. Still, it's still quite a stretch to get to 50 votes so Vice President Biden can put us over the top. We know that the last 15 votes will all have to come from the 23 holdouts in the Democratic caucus. We know that none of the 41 Republicans or Lieberman will get with the program, so we have to close ranks and get Democrats to toe the line. We have to keep the pressure up and maintain the momentum or this effort will fizzle. When the holdouts begin to feel like strike-breaking scabs, a tipping point will be reached and they will meekly fall into line. The bill will magically pass. The hard part is driving the meek out of their safety zone of intransigent indifference to form a new, progressive majority in the Senate.
Take heart and know that you can make a difference. The smallest thing you do may cause some kind of ripple that could influence your senators' votes. Last Friday, I sent a note to Norman Goldman while listening to his radio show. He commented on what I said and read the first paragraph over the air.
I've been listening to your sentiments about starting a movement to hold Democrats' feet to the fire about health care and cut them off if they don't do the right thing. I've already started on an individual basis. I e-mailed my senators (Murray and Cantwell, D-WA) who both have yet to come out actively in support of Senator Bennet's letter to Leader Reid urging him to use reconciliation to get health care reform through. I told them both that they would not get another nickel from me and I would work to unseat them in primaries (Murray this year, Cantwell in 2012) unless they sign the letter and become active supporters of a single-payer national health care system.
I'm not saying that my note to Patty Murray or that having my report of that act being read over the air influenced her to turn away from the dark side, but it might have been a factor. If she is flooded with sentiments like mine, pretty soon she'll start listening.
How's it going in your state? Here's a report on the little bit of movement in my state's delegation. If you want to comment, I'm mostly interested in what you have done to sway your senators and what change you may have had a part in.
I really didn't expect my state's two female Democratic senators (Murray and Cantwell, D-WA) to even acknowledge my hectoring e-mail. I threatened to turn my back on them politically if they didn't come out strongly for health care. One has responded, and one has not. There is something to be learned from this.
Senator Murray has issued a statement instead of signing Bennet's letter. She outlined a cautious, timid stance. She also sent me a nice note. It was full of the same kind of smarmy sweet talk that she's been spewing for the full 17 years she's been in the Senate. She wants us to believe that she's strongly for health care, but the evidence isn't there. Notice all the good intentions in this excerpt from her letter.
Health care reform efforts should strive to ensure that affordable, high-quality, and meaningful health coverage options are available to all Americans. I believe it should be a top priority to ensure Americans have access to coverage that allows them to see a doctor when they need to. People should not be forced to receive their coverage in hospital emergency rooms.
Her support base readily agrees with those sentiments, but that is the end of it. There's a lot of "should" and "would" in her letter. She never says that she wants a single payer system. She's always talking about care being affordable, implying that ultimately individuals must shell out money or they might not get the care they need. There is a blithe resignation to the execrable social Darwinist notion that a lack of willingness by rich people to pay higher taxes inevitably results in those with less money being denied basic medical care, "because we can't afford it." You hear that same crapola from all Republicans. It's the fallacious meme that spending twice as much per capita on medical care as anyone else somehow still isn't enough to provide decent care for everyone, regardless of their circumstances. There's plenty of money being spent; it's just being siphoned off and rationed by insurance companies. Murray probably gets that, but she certainly doesn't let on that she does.
What annoys me most about Senator Murray's stance is her complete lack of commitment to meaningful change as evidenced by her hazy, non-specific vision of what our objective is.
There is still a lot of debate and work to be done on health care reform legislation, but Congress is now closer than we have been in decades to giving American families and businesses more control over their own health care choices.
If I hear those Republican code words "choice" and "control" one more time, I'm going to scream. In the context of medical care, they are totally meaningless. I don't want a choice of doctors if I can't afford to pay any of them; I just want to see a qualified doctor. I don't want to control my destiny when I need professional medical intervention to save my life. Let them control it; it's their job. Apologists for the socially regressive fee-for-service model of medicine always dredge up ridiculous concepts like this to comfort those being subjected to suffering and death. They provide vague, intangible abstractions in place of substance. You know you're being conned when a politician talks about "freedom". What exactly are we free to do with respect to health care? Suffer? Die? What's next? Are you going to tell me that dying for want of health care shows that I have "dignity"?
It's the same claptrap we've been hearing for 70 years or so, "Be patient. Wait. Stoically die without protest. We're getting closer all the time to a decent, humane medical system!" Meanwhile, every other industrialized country has basic medical care for everyone. We don't. Go anywhere else in the world and see it. Here, we are still scrambling to avoid falling into the squalid, Hogarthian nightmare of being unable to afford medical care we need.
Murray votes correctly as far as I can tell, but doesn't get out in front and push for it at all. It's as if she is beholden to some group (like insurance companies or pharmaceutical firms, perchance?) who don't want us to have public health care. She used the same language as her statement in her note to me, asserting that she is a big champion of health care, but at the same time does not actively support reform because, "I don't know whether the votes exist in the Senate right now." The bottom line is that she won't sign Senator Bennet's letter urging the use of reconciliation to push public option health insurance through, but she wants to make sure we believe that she's going to vote correctly in the unlikely event that it comes to a vote.
Oh, for the love of God, woman! What does it take to get you to get off your tush and deliver on your campaign promises? Three terms in the United States Senate coming to a close and you're still talking as if you are a freshman legislator afraid to take the lead on a significant issue. Get with it! You're playing the same game as Leader Reid, waiting for an overwhelming consensus to form before you commit yourself to reform. You're so afraid of being on the losing side that you signal defeat for the very faction that you claim to champion. This is the sort of craven, weaselly behavior that I would expect from a very old white guy who wanted to garner a reputation as a "grand old man" of the Senate. You're no Robert Byrd, lady, and you'll never get confused with Ted Kennedy acting like this. To be considered a lion, you have to roar.
Is it any surprise to you that I have resolved to not help Patty Murray get a fourth term in the United States Senate? I'm done with her. I'll vote for her over a Republican, but not a damned thing beyond that.
The other senator, Maria Cantwell, is much less mealy-mouthed. She didn't answer my note at all. We all know where she stands, so what's the point in doing so? Cantwell is an unapologetic corporatist lackey, and she doesn't care who knows it. She may occasionally give some grudging acquiescence to the idea of public health care, but when push comes to shove, she fades into the woodwork. Is it any surprise to you that I am resolved to work to find a replacement for her in 2012?
Maybe I'll work to dump Senator Cantwell, and maybe I won't. I wrote most of this piece a few days ago. Today, I find that Maria has finally, reluctantly, come out in support of the public option.
This exercise in civic responsibility shows what a little well-placed activism can do. As soon as I found out that neither of my Democratic senators was standing up for public health, I got on their cases. In a fairly short period of time (a little over a week) both of them changed their position to being in favor of publicly-funded health insurance option. Of course, it wasn't my effort that turned the tide, but a groundswell of outrage from ordinary people all over this state.
After you check on your Democratic senators' current stand at whipcongress.com, give me a report on how they stand. I'm curious about the demographics of those who read this diary.