I write in response to the challenge presented by Paul Krugman in his NY Times opinion piece on Friday, August 7th, entitled "Town Hall Mobs".
Mr. Krugman ends his opinion piece thusly:
But right now Mr. Obama’s backers seem to lack all conviction, perhaps because the prosaic reality of his administration isn’t living up to their dreams of transformation. Meanwhile, the angry right is filled with a passionate intensity.
And if Mr. Obama can’t recapture some of the passion of 2008, can’t inspire his supporters to stand up and be heard, health care reform may well fail.
I am soooo frustrated with the President and Congressional "leaders" on this issue. Word is finally, if belatedly, going out to encourage liberals to attend and raise their voices at this meetings. But which of the many proposals on the table are we supposed to be fighting for? It's easy for the right to marshal their troops- they are against ANY change. Plus, their leaders are willing to tell abject lies to fire the rage of their followers (euthanasia, anyone?)
But we on the progressive side have been monitoring this battle, trying to figure out which of the promised benefits will actually emerge in a final bill. And watching the Dems make a hash of the process has been dis-heartening for so many of us on the left. No wonder it's hard to inspire us to attend these rallies- we don't know what exactly we're supposed to be defending, and we feel that our leaders are selling out in the name of some no-longer-existent concept called bi-partisanship.
My new thought is this: The Repubs in Congress are never going to vote for ANY flavor of health care reform. Their solid and stolid base will scream socialism no matter what the bill finally contains. So why not go all out, avoid the filibusterer and use the budget reconciliation process to pass a single payer system. The right is already over the edge. It appears that we don't have a single thing to lose.
And as we are seeing now with the stimulus results, diluting bills in an effort to appease Republicans who don't vote for them in the end anyway does nothing but diminish the ultimate benefits of the bill. Our economy could have been doing a lot better by now if we hadn't agreed to spend such a large percentage of the stimulus on tax reductions, which have a minimal impact on spending and the economy.
I'm a sales rep by trade, and a motto we're fond of is "Go big or go home". Seems pretty appropriate here.