The last few weeks have been pretty rough for health care reform, with only occasional good developments in contrast with way too much irritating news. But yesterday was a good day because President Obama waded full steam into the fight, and was at his best. This is the President Obama I have been waiting for on this issue - strong, intelligent, compelling, convincing. He didn't mince around with inside the beltway wonk talk about all the compromises he might be willing to accept, he explained clearly what he was for. He didn't get defensive in the face of criticism, but took it head on and made his case.
This is the Obama we have been waiting for. He directly took on the insurance companies, the lying ads and internet rumors, and all the right wing groups trying to defeat reform. He strongly defended the public option. He answered critical questions effectively. He made his case strongly.
This is what we need to see over and over again. As I argued in the Washington Post the other day, Obama needs to go to every swing Senator's state and do this kind of town hall. He needs to make the case to the Senator, on their home turf and in front of their constituents, about how important this is and why we need to move forward. The President showed in the 2008 campaign that he could take on the most formidable establishment figures in the country and beat them, now he needs to make that same kind of push for health care reform. The conventional wisdom pundits have already written health care reform off, just as they wrote Obama off in the summer of 2007. But they can still be proved wrong, if Obama doesn't listen to them and keeps on fighting alongside all of us activists who are working for health care reform.
One of the fascinating dynamics to this battle is the extent to which Obama himself seems to be resisting some of his advisers' desire to give up on the public option. As far as I can tell from their public comments and what I hear behind the scenes, people like Rahm Emanuel, Jim Messina, and Nancy-Ann Min DeParle are ready to call it a day and throw in the towel on the public option. The conventional wisdom is that only progressives in the House have kept that from happening so far, but that eventually they will cave. But listening to Obama talk about the public option, and watching him pull back Rahm repeatedly from publicly caving on it, I have grown more and more convinced that inside the White House, it is Obama himself who keeps pushing back against aides ready to throw in the towel on the issue. I think he will continue to fight hard for the public option until the moment that he is convinced there is no hope - and hopefully that moment will never come.
It reminds me a little of watching Clinton on the 1992 campaign and in the White House in some of his darkest hours. One of the things I always admired about President Clinton was his absolute refusal, sometimes in the face of advice from almost everyone, to give up on something he wanted. In the darkest hours of that 1992 campaign, in the bleakest moments of the 1993 budget fight, in the toughest times of the 1995 showdown with Newt, in the worst hours of the Lewinsky scandal, he was determined to hold his ground and fight on even when most of his advisers were ready to give up the fight.
I've never been close enough to Obama to know if he has that same steel, and he hasn't been tested so far in the same near-death ways that Clinton was. But I'm seeing signs of it in his fight for health care reform. I hope I'm right. If I am, Mr. President, if you keep fighting for real reform, know that there are many thousands of us activists who will fight with you every step of the way. We can still get this done.
The Washington Post does something in their Sunday newspaper called Topic A, which refers to whatever they think the biggest topic of the week is. This week they asked myself and five other people (Donna Brazile, Dana Perino, Doug Schoen, Shannon Brownlee and Dan Schnur) to react to the question "What should Obama do in this August recess?" in 200 words or less. Since they only gave us 200 words, I thought I would explain my thinking a little more in a blog post.
My basic belief is this: that the Obama Presidency is at a fundamental crossroads on health care. If they can't pass some kind of serious reform, a reform that requires that they take on and force the insurance industry to accept real competition and accountability, Obama will be immeasurably weakened. Other powerful special interests like Wall Street and the energy industry will know that if he can't win against the insurance industry, early in his Presidency on his number one priority, that he is not likely to take them on and win against them either. In addition, his budget, which assumed health care reform, will be a shambles. And politically, a loss on his top priority combined with falling poll numbers and a continued weak economy will make him the weakest President this early in his Presidency since at least Jimmy Carter.
Given those incredibly high stakes, I think he needs to go all in, announce the end of business-as-usual politics, and go for it. Canceling his vacation, while I hate to suggest it because Presidents need some time off and this one certainly works a lot harder than our last President, would send that kind of no-more-business-as-usual statement.
I recommended going to all the swing vote Senators' states, and meeting with them on their home turf and doing town halls with them, because it is putting pressure on them while not burning the bridge to getting their vote. For me, going to their home to sit down with them is a gesture of humility, a signal that he will go the extra mile to work something out with them, while doing a town hall with these Senators' constituents is a symbol of what is best about the democratic process, that the President is willing to dialogue with people. The contrast with the kind of mob-like tactics the right wingers are stoking could not be greater.
The stakes could not be higher, and at moments like this, I think the President needs to double down on his bet. To lose now, to let the special interests win, would be a huge setback for his entire Presidency, because it will signal to everyone that the kind of change Obama promised in his campaign has not come to Washington. Now is the time to push ahead and make real change happen.
With all of this hateful and violent rhetoric going on, I haven't seen one Republican leader asking for people to cool their rhetoric, or heard them condemn any of these tactics. My question for Republican party, and their allies at conservative media companies that employ the kind of people making these remarks: what exactly would have to be said for you to distance yourself from these people? How far would someone have to go before you got uncomfortable with it? What would have to said before Fox News considered firing someone?
If Glenn Beck actually directly called for the assassination of someone, would it bother you guys? If Rush Limbaugh just screamed a racial insult referring to the President of the United States into his microphone, would it make you pause at all? If Lou Dobbs went so far as to call for the murder of random Hispanics in the street, would CNN consider firing him? If Michael Savage actually encouraged a caller to his show to go blow up a federal building like Timothy McVeigh did, would any republicans suggest he pull his rhetoric back a bit?
The scary thing to me about what's going on right now in this country is not the violence, because this country has always had violent extremists, and we've survived as a country and democracy. What concerns me, though, is that the Republicans seem to have crossed some kind of line to where they actually tolerate and even defend all this violence. They have stopped doing that now, and are even egging the violence on now in some cases. I fear the answer to my question- what would it take for you to condemn the hatefulness- because the answer seems to be that there is nothing that could happen that would make them say "Stop!" And that's a very scary thing for a democracy.
An angry crowd opposed to health care reform disrupted a town meeting held by Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Austin) at an Austin grocery store Saturday and followed him to another town meeting in nearby Bastrop in the latest in what appears to be an organized right-wing effort to disrupt Democratic members of Congress. See more at Progressive Populist. Cross posted from DailyKos.com.
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