In my earlier diary "The big stupid of health care reform", I argued first and foremost that our most basic problem in the health care fight derived from the overall deficiencies of fragmentary, short-term, ad hoc leftwing organizing vs. hegemonic, long-term, strategically pre-planned rightwing organizing. Among other things, I wrote:
Unlike us, the right builds long-term institutional infrastructure. With that infrastructure in place, it's a relatively easy task to pull together a coalition to do whatever it is you want to do. You are not assured of success, of course. But you don't have to reinvent the wheel every time you need to go into battle. And as a result you can afford to go all out, and risk losing everything, because the cost of doing it all over again is not prohibitive. In fact, if you do it right, you can actually gain more from the repeat effort than it costs you.
Compared to that, our organizing methodology is doomed to failure.
Indeed, if ever there was an issue custom-made for shifting the country into a predominantly progressive political direction, it is the issue of health care for all. Indeed, this is precisely why the Republicans rallied to defeat health care reform under Clinton-even though that effort was itself a mixed-up half-measure. If the left realized the need for hegemonic struggle, and then looked around for one specific issue to use as a vehicle to wage such struggle, we would be very hard pressed to come up with something better than universal health care. And yet, instead of seeing this struggle as something that benefits us-as an opportunity to bring more and more people around to seeing things from a progressive perspective-we see it as something that puts us into peril, in panic mode, frightened into giving everything away.
While we haven't organized around this for hegemonic struggle in the past, that doesn't mean there aren't things we can start doing right now to change things-both short term strategies and tactics to make significant gains and reset the terms of terms of struggle, and a long-term shift in thinking based on preserving the state-level single-payer option, so that we can use state-level fights for hegemonic struggle in the future.
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First of all, concerning immediate possibilities, in comments to that diary, Gordon Ginsberg wrote:
Another angle: The Time Is NOW in Terms of Power Politics for The Left
What are the stakes for the people who are supposed to benefit from HCR? Neither House/Senate compromise bills are going to get fairly priced pro-active comprehensive HC into any consumer's hands any time soon. That is why this seems like a uniquely opportune moment for the left Left to flex its muscles: to behave like Lieberman/Nelson/Snowe and bring the process to a halt (because we can) in order to be heard and to wield power.
What is there to lose?
Second,bystander linked to this article at Firedoglake:
The Insidious Myth Of The Progressive "Bill Killers"
By: Jon Walker Sunday December 20, 2009 5:25 am
There is a very insidious myth right now that there is a large group of progressive leaders who want to "kill" health care reform in its entirety. While there might be some progressive leaders out there who have advocated for this position, I have yet to hear from them. What I have heard from people like Howard Dean, Markos Moulitsas, Keith Olbermann, Jane Hamsher, etc... is that they simply want to kill the current version of the Senate bill....
While I cannot speak for other progressives, I personally have outlined at least four strategies to produce a better reform package.
- Try to pass a version of the House bill using reconciliation. Take provisions removed by the Byrd rule and pass them by attaching them whole or piecemeal to the next few big defense and/or agricultural appropriations bills.
- Use reconciliation to pass a bill with only Byrd-rule proof provisions. This would include an expansion of Medicaid, expansion of CHIP, early Medicare buy-in, public option, possibly employer mandate, etc...
- Pass the bill with no individual mandate for right now. Let progressives hold the individual mandate hostage until some point between now and 2015 (when the individual mandate goes into effect), and they will trade it in exchange for better reforms. There is zero need to have the individual mandate just siting on the books unused for the next few years.
- Force Harry Reid to use the "nuclear option" like Bill Frist threatened to do.
I will admit number four is a long shot (although in reality it is the simplest and best solution), but the first three should be completely doable. All the progressive leaders I know who are against this particular Senate bill have advocated for similar strategies to produce a better reform package.
The real choice is between: this current terrible Senate bill, a potentially much more progressive reform package passed using hardball tactics, or no health care reform bill at all. Obama and the Democratic leadership clearly prefer the first option, but they have also made it clear that they will not accept complete failure by passing no bill at all. If they can't get this massive, corporate giveaway Senate bill passed into law and are left with no other option, they will [resort to] using reconciliation.
Clearly, the passage of a much better bill is still very much possible, and the chief tactic being used right now is the spreading of panic, confusion and disinformation to prevent people from realizing that and acting accordingly. But the one thing that needs to be added to all the above is preservation of the right for states to pass their own single-payer plans.
Doing this will open up the gates for us to move forward, doing the fight for universal health care properly from here on. What does that mean? Here are a few key ideas to get things started:
(1) Doing it as a form of hegemonic struggle. This means doing it as a means for changing people's ideology--how they view the world--in terms of what constitutes common sense.
(2) Doing it in terms of health care as a human right--and as a moral imperative. This is a key aspect of the hegemonic struggle involved.
(a) The framework of universal rights has been central to the liberal tradition throughout the modern era, beginning with the right of conscience/religious liberty, and expanding repeatedly over time. The 1948 United Nations Declaration of Human Rights is one of the most comprehensive expressions of political liberalism there is, and has been used by activists all around the world to create more progressive societies.
(b) Framing health care as a moral imperative creates an illuminating and inspiring alternative to the right's petty, selectively-used employment of personal morality to define what political morality consists of.
(3) Doing it in terms of combining a just morality with economic common sense. Our current system is the worst in the world in terms of cost effectiveness-and virtually everyone knows it. But such talk is rarely placed front-and-center, because it helps build pressure that just might turn against the fat cats-which is precisely what we want, not just to help pass Medicare for All, but also to help change people's outlook on economic issues more generally, so that they actually look at how economic issues play out in the real world, rather than falling back on mindlessly echoing rightwing talking points.
(4) Doing it in terms of combining all the above with specific narratives and arguments that reflect the life experience of different groups-physicians, nurses, small business owners, etc.
And, of course, as an added benefit, the more tha the Catfood Coalition complains about the crushing costs of Medicare, the more they help us make our case that what's needed is a universal system that's far more cost efficient than the wasteful mish-mash we have today.
In short, the terrible fix we find ourselves in now can be the turning point towards a whole different future for us, a whole different future of organizing for hegemonic struggle that will finally put us into the same game as the right.
No more bringing a knife plastic yogurt spoon to a gun fight nuclear war, thank you very much. |
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