In his triumphant speech on election night, the next senator from Massachusetts should have thanked top Democrats in Washington for all they did to make his victory possible.
For a year now, leading Democrats have steadily embraced more corporate formulas for “health care reform.” In the name of political realism, they have demobilized and demoralized the Democratic base. In the process, they’ve fueled right-wing populism.
The Democratic leadership on health care and so much else – including bank bailouts, financial services, foreclosures and foreign policy – has been so corporate that Republicans have found it easy to play populist.
Fixated on passage of something that could be called health care reform, the Democratic establishment has propagated the myth that enacting such a law is vital to the political viability of the Obama presidency.
With few exceptions, the most progressive members of Congress have twisted themselves into knots to move with the choreography from the White House. The worse the health care bill got, the more they strained to lavish incongruous praise on it.
Defenders of the current health care legislation don’t like to acknowledge how thoroughly corporate it is. In the wake of the Senate election in Massachusetts, we’re sure to see a new wave of mass emails from progressive groups urging a renewed fight for a public option. But the Obama administration threw a public option under the Pennsylvania Avenue bus well before the GOP victory in Massachusetts finalized its burial.
Key provisions – such as a mandate requiring individuals to buy private health insurance without a public option – are giveaways to mega-corporations on a scale so vast that it boggles the mind.
Such a federal health care law – massively combining an intrusive government mandate with corporate power – would be a godsend to right-wing populism for decades.
Government power should be used for the common good, not for humongous profiteering. But on the near horizon is a law that would further bloat already bloated corporate coffers while undermining basic precepts of a social compact.
The mandate places legal, financial and ideological burdens on the individual for health care. In the process, at best, many low-income people would only have access to inferior coverage with plenty of holes.
Rather than affirm the principle of health care as a human right, the current scenarios for health care reform lay out limited federal subsidies for private insurance premiums – in effect, an entitlement program in political terms, sure to be vulnerable to the kind of safety-net shredding that has done so much harm in recent decades.
The current versions of health care reform, New York Times economics writer David Leonhardt noted on January 20, “are more conservative than Bill Clinton’s 1993 proposal. For that matter, they’re more conservative than Richard Nixon’s 1971 plan, which would have had the federal government provide insurance to people who didn’t get it through their job.”
One of the biggest themes – repeated endlessly by pundits and meme-prone Democrats – has been the assertion that getting health care reform signed into law is essential for the political viability of a Democratic Congress and the Obama presidency. But at this point, given what’s on the table under the Capitol Dome, the opposite is likely to be the case.
If Obama signs the kind of health care legislation now in the pipeline, it will be a political gift to the Republicans – and a crowning negative achievement of bad leadership for the Congressional majority.
Key House Democrats declared throughout most of 2009 that they would only support a health care reform bill with a “robust” public option. Now, the same members of Congress are saying they’ll be pleased to vote for a final bill with no public option at all.
Meanwhile, at the grassroots level, many progressives are apt to buy into a false choice between capitulating inside the Democratic Party or staying away from it. But there’s another option: an inside/outside strategy that involves openly fighting for progressive power within the party while also organizing outside of it.
If we want more progressive officeholders, then elections are part of the process: beginning with Democratic primaries this year. Support genuine progressive candidates – and if you don’t see any, maybe you should do some recruiting. There’s no time to lose.
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
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