Guardian: Do progressives support watered down reform, or work to kill it?

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I’m gonna get it for this, both here and from my friends in the national blogosphere…

Three days ago, the online editors at the Guardian’s Comment Is Free website turned down a proposed piece about the passion gap between pro and anti health reformers in much of the country (not Vermont), instead asking me to “focus on the question of whether the left should get behind Obama’s plan, despite the fact that it falls short of their goals?”

Sure, I said. After all, since when do I turn down an opportunity to opine? And how often do I get to do it professionally (answer: not very)?

But I was dreading it because I knew where I would go, and I wasn’t ready to go there. Not yet. Nor was I, in any honest, direct assessment of that very specific question, willing to be cagey or deceptive – even strategically so. As such I was up until all hours with it, when I can usually knock out a blog piece in almost no time.

Anyway, have a read if you like: here’s the link. Then you can come back here and beat me up (or there… the Guardian site takes comments too).

I suppose the long and the short is that my bluff is being prematurely called. I didn’t plan it to be a bluff, but when you get right to it, I suppose I was fooling myself. Does that make me the worst, most self-sabotaging type of liberal? I honestly don’t know. You tell me.

8 thoughts on “Guardian: Do progressives support watered down reform, or work to kill it?”

  1. Something that conservatives have been doing for a long time is to try to shift the center so that more extreme positions, over time, come across as more moderate.  There’s no reason we can’t push to shift the center in a different direction.  We’ve done it successfully (at least in New England) with same sex marriage– in a very short time we went from civil unions being evil to civil unions being the conservative alternative to same-sex marriage to “what was all the fuss about?”

  2. First off, it’s great to keep this debate on the front page.

    One big issue with this that I have is that I don’t see how this is even on the pathway to a single payer system, or any responsible system. Even if these co-ops do get started, and even if they do start operating on a nonprofit basis, how long will it take before they are on the same side as that other “nonprofit”, Blue Cross/Blue Shield?

    Oh yeah–mandatory snark: did you come up with “Morton’s fork” on your own, or did it get inserted on the other side of the Pond? I’ve never heard of it over here.

  3. Very good article John, and you point out clearly the bleak choices left, but this fight has already been lost.

    Fight for true reform or take what you can? Obama has let the right wing and the know-nothings carry the day. There is no way he can now come back and make the case for any meaningful reform because he has empowered the mob at the expense of reason. His tactics scream out that the mob is right, these are radical ideas that are wrong for America. If Obama can’t even support them, how can the Blue Dogs? There’s no turning back from that, no sudden discovery of core values after they’ve been bartered away.

    Work a compromise and claim “victory” and build from there? How, when you’ve sold out? How can you propose a public option after you’ve said it’s not necessary? How can you challenge the mob after they’ve beaten you up once?

    You go back to those Brits and tell them they can pickle their “Morton’s Fork”; this is a “Kobayashi Maru”, bloke!

  5. As always, good writing. Steve West of WKVT loved it. He read it first thing on the air this morning!

    This was an interesting perspective though. From Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi.

    “The public option was not a cure-all. In fact, the Democrats had in reality already managed to kill the public option by watering it down to the point of near-meaninglessness. But the notion that our president not only does not have any use anymore for a public option, but in fact “will be satisfied” if there is merely “choice and competition” in the market is, well, disgusting.”  – Matt Taibbi

    http://trueslant.com/matttaibbi/2009/08/17/key-feature-of-obama-health-plan-may-be-out-washingtonpost-com/

    He’s got an even bigger article eviscerating the Dems. Wonder what that’s going to look like.

  6. … this will all be worked out during reconciliation — as many have speculated all along.

    I’m not sure I share Howard’s confidence, but he does offer an alternative view that the Obama admin has been naive or disingenuous or both.

    Excellent diary on all of this:

    http://www.dailykos.com/storyo…

  7. I agree that Obama has lost this fight and completely given in to the right wing, like Clinton did in the 90’s.  He may yet salvage his presidency, especially if the economy starts to rebound, but he has essentially lost this fight.  the GOP will tear him and the dems up in September, then kick his but in 2010.  If you want health care now go to Canada, Britian, or anywhere else, but it ain’t going to happen here.  

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