You can't even see that the conservatives are winning when you're a supposed progressive and you write things like this from Matt Yglesias about the decades-long health care reform struggle:
I think that to understand what’s wrong with the conservative movement today, you need to think about Barry Goldwater’s 1964 Presidential campaign. In ‘64, the GOP establishment felt that Goldwater was too radical. They said that nominating a hard-rightist like Goldwater would be counterproductive. But conservative activists worked hard, and they did it. Goldwater got the nod. And, just as the establishment predicted, Goldwater got crushed. And just as the established predicted, it proved to be counterproductive. The 1964 landslide led directly to Medicare, Medicaid, Title I education spending, and the "war on poverty." In the 45 years since that fateful campaign, the conservative movement managed to gain total control over the Republican Party and to sporadically govern the country. But it’s only very partially rolled back one aspect of the Johnson administration’s domestic policy.
Which is just to say that the conservative movement from 1964-2009 was a giant failure. By nominating Goldwater, it invited a massive progressive win that all the subsequent conservative wins were unable to undue. But the orthodox conservative tradition of ‘64 is that it was a great success that laid the groundwork for the triumphs to come.
Which is to say that it’s not just a movement incapable of thinking seriously about the interests of the country, it can’t think rigorously about its own goals. 2009-2010 has already seen the greatest flowering of progressive policy since 1965-66. No matter how well Republicans do in the 2010 midterms, the right will never fully roll back what the 111th Congress has done.
But what Yglesias writes here belies his own argument. What he's not seeing is the massive success of the conservative movement at cultural hegemony (which Paul Rosenberg, who writes about it frequently, pithily defines as "a dominant ideology in drag as common sense").
Obama was elected with the hopes of many progressives that he would be able to lead a political and cultural realignment in the country. That was the meaning of talk of him as a transformational president.
So with the large majorities of Democrats in House and Senate, what has he accomplished?
He's passed a health reform bill that is a major political triumph for the Democratic Party, as success at health care reform has eluded presidents of both parties for the past century.
But what else is it?
It's insurance reform that is a conservative solution to the problem of medical coverage. It's arguably more conservative than Richard Nixon's universal health care plan of 1974 rejected by Ted Kennedy as too conservative. It's very similar to the alternate health care bill proposed by Bob Dole in 1994 and rejected by Bill Clinton as too conservative. It's almost a clone of the Massachusetts health care plan brought in by Mitt Romney in 2006.
The conservative thinkers of the the American Enterprise Institute agreed with it so much that they were silenced in order not to hurt the political tactics of GOP opposition to it:
Since, he (Frum) is no longer affiliated with AEI, I feel free to say publicly something he told me in private a few months ago. He asked if I had noticed any comments by AEI "scholars" on the subject of health care reform. I said no and he said that was because they had been ordered not to speak to the media because they agreed with too much of what Obama was trying to do.
The fact that Yglesias thinks of this health care reform package as "the greatest flowering of progressive policy since 1965-66" is an indication that the conservative battle for cultural dominance has been pretty much won, and progressives lost.
When you call a conservative plan a progressive one, you move the center rightward and open up yet more space on the right for even more extremist propositions to flower. This is a perfect example of the successful use by the conservative movement of the technique called shifting the Overton Window of Political Possibilities:
Imagine, if you will, a yardstick standing on end. On either end are the extreme policy actions for any political issue. Between the ends lie all gradations of policy from one extreme to the other. The yardstick represents the full political spectrum for a particular issue. The essence of the Overton window is that only a portion of this policy spectrum is within the realm of the politically possible at any time. Regardless of how vigorously a think tank or other group may campaign, only policy initiatives within this window of the politically possible will meet with success...
Actions outside of this window, while theoretically possible, and maybe more optimal in terms of sound policy, are politically unsuccessful. Even if a few legislators were willing to stick out their necks for an action outside the window, most would not risk the disfavor of their constituents...
Since commonly held ideas, attitudes and presumptions frame what is politically possible and create the "window," a change in the opinions held by politicians and the people in general will shift it. Move the window of what is politically possible and those policies previously impractical can become the next great popular and legislative rage.
Likewise, policies that were once acceptable become politically infeasible as the window shifts away from them.
In 2010, with a Dem House, Senate, and WH, the politically possible has become the conservative plan and the politically infeasible is the progressive plans of the past: single-payer, or Medicare For All, even the national public option that Obama campaigned on as late as 2008.
So, for those who can't remember, or don't know in this era of conservative cultural hegemony, even among progressives apparently, what would an actual progressive health care plan look like? What principles would it espouse? Here are a few that come to mind:
It would be universal.
- The Obama reform pays lip service to universality, but accepts that in fact not everyone will be covered.
It would be inexpensive for users.
- Premiums would be low, easily afforded by all, and with subsidies for the truly poor. The system would be subsidized by taxes on the wealthy.
It would not be punitive.
- There would be no penalty
instead of coverage. If premiums had to be collected through the tax system, they would be applied to coverage that way, with perhaps an extra ding to make up for the extra administration involved.
It would not be tiered, with different levels of care based on wealth or employment status.
- Everyone would have access to the same high quality medical care, paid for through the same system.
It would be set up as a health care system not an insurance system.
- No underwriting for different groups based on age, gender, medical history, etc. Everyone is in the same big pool.
Health care would be based on need, not ability to pay.
- No worries about being forced to purchase junk insurance because you can't afford anything else, or having insurance you're afraid to use because it will make your premiums go up. If you have a medical need, you will receive the care you need, no matter what.
***
The fact that those principles have become politically infeasible and a conservative plan is being referred to as a progressive triumph indicates the conservative movement isn't losing at all. Every time you tout this health care win as a progressive triumph, you're enshrining conservative principles in place of progressive ones, and establishing progressive principles as infeasible and beyond the pale.
In fact, the conservative movement is winning so thoroughly that it looks like progressives can no longer even imagine what winning would be on their own terms.