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When things went to pot with health care reform, the President was off touring Africa. It’s not that the President shouldn’t go abroad and strengthen America’s standing in the world. It is that he should think about timing. This week the President went decided to go abroad to try and get the Olympics to come to his hometown. Meanwhile, at home, the public option–something 65% of Americans support–went down in flames at a Senate Finance Committee hearing.
Worse, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) sent out a condescending and ill-timed e-mail to supporters of the public option the moment after it failed, and the President’s organization started downplaying the need to hold insurance executives accountable. To my eye, all of this sent the message that the President apparently thinks two weeks of sporting events on Lake Michigan is more important than a lifetime of access to quality, affordable health care for all Americans.
This, of course, isn’t intentional. But it’s the result of a White House that has a hard time understanding the framing of issues. It seems like the White House tends to spend more time fighting battles with fringe media figures than it does talking to its progressive base about policy making decisions.
The result is that the progressive base is alienated from the President’s policies. People are generally unwilling to part with their time and money unless they know that their efforts will yield tangible results. Progressive activists are not going to volunteer for Organizing for America if they believe that the health care reform package will not do anything to stop the abuses of the insurance industry.
The fact that the progressive base hasn’t volunteered for Organizing for America is evident in the number of Facebook supporters the group has. Last year, the President’s official Facebook page garnered over six million supporters. MyBarackObama.com, a portal for activists to plan events and network with each other, had over a million unique users. Organizing for America’s Facebook page has a whopping 5,655 members as of 12:50 this afternoon.
The Baucus bill–the bill which Barack Obama wants desperately to declare "historic health care reform"–will ensure that future Presidents will have to deal with the issue of health care reform. The bill mandates that private insurance be purchased. There are no restrictions on premium increases, medical loss ratios, or executive salaries in the Baucus bill. Without these consumer protections, the premiums Americans pay will keep rising at four times the rate of inflation.
The "historic" health care reform will do nothing to stop the subsidizing of high executive salaries and eight-figure beach homes by the American people. The "historic" health care reform will do nothing to stop the fact that, with wages stagnating, every premium is a wage decrease for American workers.
The "historic" health care reform being considered by the Senate Finance Committee offers no mechanism for holding insurance companies accountable. The law may say that they can no longer deny care to the sick, refuse to insure people who had the misfortune of being born with genes that lead to chronic illnesses, or set arbitrary caps on how much medical care a person can receive. But without a non-profit public option that puts people before profits, health care reform is doomed to be the anti-stimulus, a bill which takes money from American workers and puts it into the off-shore tax shelters of CEOs.
30 Comments
Thanks, recommended.
Nice, piece. Not only does he have problems with his base, but I think someone else will be able to mobilize it, if he doesn’t start stepping up and doing some things for people. Right now, I think that Dennis Kucinich is a more popular figure among progressives than he is.
I am no fan of Kucinich. I know lots of progressives who don’t like him.
However, he is the only one with a real plan on how to trully reform health care to benefit the American people, rather than the big greedy insurance robber barons.
This apparent indiferent behavior on the part of President Obama surprises me, and I wonder what happened to make him change so much. Did the private insurance industry put a price on the head of his children? because to see such a dramatic shift from what he has believed since his begining times in public office, something huge had to have happened, like a threat on the lives of his children unless he doesn’t back down from real reform. You read his books and see his actions now, you would think the books were written by a totally different person. Very strange.
Very strange?
Or the inner workings of the military industrial drug war?
I would say he is compromised and we should see it as our duty to rescue him. On the other hand, maybe he was their agent all along and was just fooling us. In the end it doesn’t really matter, he is doing what they want like nothing has changed. It almost might as well be Bush.
I am afraid I am depressed, I feel we have gone over the event horizon. Nothing we can do can save us now.
Obama supports the Olympics and he opposes health care reform. His activities look bad because they are bad. That seems to fall under “intentional” to me.
I agree. I think Obama’s “indifference” is intentional. Who cares whether Chicago gets the bloody Olympics in 2016? I sure as hell don’t. And many Chicagoans would rather have health care than the bloody Olympics.
The Baucus bill is a pile of shit. The bill got booed at one of Obama’s speeches, and he looked surprised when it got booed.
Why should activists go on and do anything if Obama and Rahm are going to diss them at every turn and throw them under the bus whenever a GOPer bitches?
B I N G O … his “indifference” is intentional.
Good piece.
Z
I can understand why he wants to go to Denmark. He used to represent Chicago, and he’s a big sports nut. That said, the Olympics can come again in 10 years. Health care reform can’t.
It’s not so much that I oppose him going to bat for his hometown on the Olympics, it’s that I wish his people would look at the awful optics of it. I mean here is the President pitching the Olympics–something no regular American can afford to go to anyway–at a time when millions are losing insurance and struggling economically. It’s just absurd optics.
For progressives it is poor optics, but for the conservatives I live among, it is a big deal to get the Olympics. They will be very excited if Obama pulls this off. Cheap entertainment is big when the economy is bad and though not many will attend, they’ll all watch on TV and get excited that they are “home” games. No one ever said Americans in general had their priorities straight.
Actually, the base has a problem with its White House.
Perfectly stated!
Depends on whether Obama can pull a Clinton putting it together by running to the center right.
I see much more polarization now than I saw in 1996. And Clinton did throw liberals some red meat every now and again, a few cabinet posts and the like.
Obama’s governing coalition is not his electoral coalition.
Of course there’s not been much governing so far, just a wholesale vacuuming out of the treasury and our pockets under Democrat rule, so take that FWIW.
That all might make it more difficult for Obama to get reelected with a depressed progressive base, depending of course on the appeal of the Republican.
So it might actually end up being the case that the White House has a problem with its base.
I used to get so mad at people who “wasted” their vote on Ralph Nader. I cant count how many times I told them they were responsible (in 2000) for Al Gore’s loss to George Bush 43.
Well, in 2008, I fell for Obama’s campaign pitch for a public option, hook, line, and sinker. I thought Barack Obama was a brilliant man, motivated to act for the people, for all the right reasons.
If President Obama does not fight and deliver, the most fundamental plank in his campaign platform (you kinow, the affordable health insurance public option), I am finished, forever, with the democrats.
The Democratic Party ignores its “liberal” base at its peril. You want the Republicans to make gains in 2010? Keep it up, Rahm & Harry. The base delivered the 2008 election to Obama. There wont be enough corporate money in the world to get the base motivated enough to campaign, participate, and vote in 2010. No, but the Republicans will turn out….
Democrats will NOT be back in 2010 if there isnt a strong robust public option. Not this time, not in that election. We have had ENOUGH!!!!
but Selise, they love to play the ‘innocent bystander’ card, the ‘we don’t have the votes’ card.
A loss of the Congress in 2010 provides lots of juicy opportunities to ‘compromise’ with the (R) side – the kinds of compromise the corporate backers of both parties pay for.
Then, Obama can fire up the old marketing campaign in 2012 and blame any shortcomings on those darn Republicans.
The (R)’s can oblige by running some scary, demented hobgoblin, and the wavering elements of the (D) base will scurry back into the paddock, and continue to vote (D), no matter what.
hopefully you and others of conscience will stay true to the realizations that are so clear now.
abandoning one’s principles on the slippery slope of the Least Worst is the waste, and the results of this strategy are all around us.
hi sporkovat. it’s a little confusing since sellse joined but i am not him/her and she/he is not me. it’s just the difference between an l and an i. — selise
p.s. sometimes i’ll go with least worst, and sometimes not. depends on how bad least worst is. but i agree that “we don’t have the votes” is a lie. someone called it the process dodge and wrote a diary about it a couple of years ago. anyway, the fisa fight in the house was my classroom. now i think the Ds lie just as much as the Rs do, the difference is cultural in that the Ds lie is ways we have more difficulty seeing through. see for example my comment on the war on science re climate change and the kerry-boxer bill.
I totally agree with you, because his platform as Democratic Presidential candidate met the requirements for most of us: that we would finally have a President who works for the people rather than for big corporations, that he believed strongly in a health reform that included a strong public option available for all Americans, that the Republican style of “trickle down economics” will no longer dictate our economic well being, that ending our policy of conflict throughout the world would stop, and that lobbyists would not run the White House.
I don’t know what happened, but the change is so drastic that many of us are in disbelief. I have written to the White House to voice my deep concern and dissapointment in the President’s change in policy positions from those promised to the American people. Did the Private Insurance Industry threaten the lives of his family? what happened? Even his two books don’t reflect the sudden shift, so something huge must have happened to cause him to shift so extremely, knowing well that he would loose the majority of his base in the process.
I say, we start a new party all together, the Green Democratic Party, and leave these two old parties to fizzle out–they have outgrown their usefulness and have become the thorn in the sides of Americans from all walks of life. Once greed takes a hold, there is no turning back–and I see both parties rittled with greed.
>>I say, we start a new party all together, the Green Democratic Party, and leave these two old parties to fizzle out–they have outgrown their usefulness and have become the thorn in the sides of Americans from all walks of life. Once greed takes a hold, there is no turning back–and I see both parties riddled with greed.
Take a look at my recent notes on Solidarity for Democracy, not a third party in the usual sense but a parallel non-party public interest movement focused on just two things: elections/legislation reform (de-corrupt Congress) and media reform (de-conglomerate media), addressing these meta-processes first (and keep them healthy) to make the legislation of smart policy possible (like public healthcare/Medicare for All, environment, education, energy, etc). This movement would function alongside a third party or renewed Democratic Party as an influence, developing standards and principles for these two major projects at the entryway to our democracy. See more notes at link.
The base has a problem with the Obama White House and this is one thing the base can do about it.
New party.
Progressive values are not being properly represented by our two establishment parties, we need to form a new one.
Obama’s going to Denmark is easily explainable: he’s the Salesman in Chief. He’s excellent at making speeches, providing vague generalities, and selling unpopular programs gussied up to look like reform. That’s why his friend “Bob” Rubin and Goldman picked him years ago as their future leader. Obama is not a progressive and never has been a democrat from the Democratic side of the party. He’s a DLCer at best, just as is his pick for Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel. Too many people here and in liberal circles still, and for no reason whatsoever, see him as an agent of change. The only thing Obama really worked hard for (aside from his Olympics moment) is the bailout to banks and Wall St. He’s done NOTHING to create jobs, nothing to deal with unemployment, nada for average Americans and the wars continue under him (and will probably expand soon to Iran). He repeatedly lies: remember, “I will hold all health care meetings in public and televise them live on C-SPAN.” What a whopper that was. And despite a history of falsehoods and broken promises, many liberals still believe this guy.
The WH is acting penny-wise and pound-foolish, when it blows off the Progressive base and allows reichwingers to set the agenda for them.
I, personally, know of 10 people who voted for Obama that were either weepublicans or Independents, and the younger ones are already disillusioned by the WH’s backtracking on healthcare issues, especially.
The fact that the WH has been so silent on the most important issues — and campaign promises — is not a good sign for the 2010 & 12 elections.
Somebody needs to tell those inside the bubble what’s really going on outside of it.
I think of the Olympics as the next worst of the bread and circuses events after the so-called Superbowl which is awful rubbish. Each is a brand improvement opportunity for major enterprises as well as for the pro (i.e., highly paid) and amateur athletes who participate.
Obama is an empty suit. There were telltale signs throughout the campaign. If the official opposition party were not in such a depraved state, no one would’ve ever taken notice of Obama’s substance-free bid for the presidency.
After all these years, H.L. Mencken’s rather unflattering observations about American politics and the people drawn to it, still holds.
Heh, American democracy; “…the worship of Jackals by Jackasses.”
We do love us some identity-politics.
Americans have always been able to step over their dead countrymen to get to their bank. Nothing has changed. Obama has obviously been bought and paid for by Our Corporate Masters. I think it’s finally dawning on the population that they actually have no influence over their government. Looks like tea-bagging may go bipartisan.
This is a bipartisan movement. I am certain I would have more happy with Hillary. At least she would have stood up for health care.
She is standing up for endless war, you can still be ‘proud’ of her.
The progressives will not be depressed. The 2008 election was a triumph for US and is a moment of justified pride for the country. The fact that this president like the majority of the presidents before him is servant of the corporate directors bank, war, insurance and pharmaceutical industries only means the revolution will take a little longer. With the help of most of the American people a lot of hard work and some hope we made a half-white half-black nobody named Barack Obama president of the United States beating back 85% of old media, 100% of conventional wisdom and centuries of institutionalized racism. There is nothing we cannot do.
But you’re right about one thing. Most Americans want public health insurance. If Max Baucus, Rahm Emanuel and their respective sock puppets in the White House and congress manage to kill it then the teabaggers have a point. If no one is listening then the time for talk has passed.
He’s certainly got a problem with this part of his base. Due to this monstrosity of reform, my insurance premium for a $5,000 deductible policy will be $1,347.49 per month. Needless to say, this will be subject to the excise tax.I work for a two person company and because of this tax, my employer will be dropping insurance coverage.
Because I don’t even make what the insurance costs, I’ll be without insurance for the first time in my adult life. Oh yeah, I’ll have to pay a fine, too. If this is reform, I hope there’s someone out there who’s going to benefit because it’s sure not me.
It’s still hard to believe that I’ve spent so much time and money working for reform. Had I known in advance that this would be the result………
Barack Obama has had plenty of opportunity these past six months to come out in a very public way and put his WH behind Single Payer (did not) or to define in complete terms a Medicare Universal Public Option (did not) or to early on pick his team of Congressional D’s who would be on point for a strong,viable Public Option (did not).
We have gotten a high count of Obama WH back channel suggestions that a strong,for profit insurer adverse Public Option is not being truly looked for,is not required by this Obama WH and will not stop Obama WH from signing off on a mandated but non Public Option premised for profit insurers friendly healthcare “reform” bill.
The stench of K Street permeates this Obama WH whether they want to admit it or not. Rahm Emanuel was a poor choice for WH CoS being he clearly likes Blue Dog Democrat styled politics and politicians. The fact that the Obama WH greenlighted a pay for play deal with the drug makers and sellers is a huge tell.
Finally why is Max Baucus getting the “this guy is a hero” treatment from Barack Obama? Why? Anyone here who follows FDL on daily basis have any reason to think or believe Max Baucus is not a skunk at this point?
Anyone on this comments thread think or believe Max Baucus has done the 65 percent of Americans who want a strong Public Option any real favors? Compared to the water he carries for the for profit healthcare gangs?
Barack Obama is holding hands with and clearly wants to sit next to Max on this so called “reform” of healthcare. If this craptastic “reform” comes to be a mandated join and pay the for profits or pay penalty or face IRS attacks it is Barack Obama’s fault. He should go down in fiery defeat in 2012 for it too.
A “change” he can and should belive in.
Obama lost me after he did a 180 and voted for the FISA Bill he swore during the primaries he would vote against. I realized then Obama was just another political huckster who did give great speeches though. Do you think any of those speeches will bring back the 44,000 Americans who will die from lack of health insurance the first year of his presidency? I wasted my vote on Nader. I have a clear conscience. The Dems will lose the House to the crazies in 2010. Reap what you sow, Corporate Owned Democrats(CODS).