That answer? You can always choose the public option instead.
Instead the President cynically chose to keep backing the public option publicly, long after he'd traded it away privately. But he did so in a lackluster manner that quickly made it clear to some of us that he had made some sort of deal with someone, somewhere. He damaged both himself and liberalism with this approach, by undercutting his personal credibility while failing to champion progressive principles.
The Right Proposes, The Left Disposes
The most direct message Obama sent to Congress as health-care deliberations began was this one: "I am not the first President to take up this cause, but I am determined to be the last." To cynical parliamentarians that sounded very much like this: I'll sign pretty much any health care bill you send my way.
The way in which the President got his health-care bill passed -- which mostly involved letting conservative Democrats parlay with Republicans, then failing to win Republican votes anyway -- carried the seeds of troubles yet to come.
The end result was a bill whose key provisions were developed by the conservative American Enterprise Institute and enacted into law by Republican Governor Mitt Romney in Massachusetts.
Here's a question: Is it a liberal "win" if Democrats enact policies in 2010 that were first proposed by conservatives in 1993?
Medicare For Almost
Bill Scher points to legislative triumphs of the past, like Medicare under Lyndon Johnson, as proof that dealmaking with the powerful gets results. But Johnson never abandoned the rhetoric of liberalism, even when he sacrificed some of its goals in pursuit of the best achievable outcome. On far too many occasions Obama has abandoned that rhetoric.
The President has also treated progressives inside and outside his party with scorn that borders on contempt. "Sanctimonious," he called them, and "purists" who would be "without victories."
And yet, as some of us predicted at the time, a more "progressive" outcome would have been far more popular than the one he got. Obama's push for unpopular provisions like the excise tax wasn't politically expedient. It was the result of his own choices, by all the evidence, and not the product of political necessity. He owes the left an apology, and more attention to its advice, now that it has proved to be prescient on so many issues.
Obama's defenders defend the health-care bill's weaknesses by pointing to the improvements made to Medicare since it was initially passed. But could those improvements have taken place if LBJ had dismissed their importance during Medicare's initial passage?
There's no evidence that the President tried to win liberalism's battles before trading them away for the sake of expediency.There are many ways to lose a battle, but the most important one of all is this: First you must try to win it.
The Long View
Something else is missing from the "How Liberals Win" approach: a long view of liberalism. Obamacare's a textbook example, since it was first proposed as a conservative alternative to "Hillarycare" (itself a cumbersome compromise with corporations) in the early 1990s.
Yes, its passage was "historic" in several ways, at least one of which was ironic: Had Democrats agreed to support this conservative proposal in 1993, when Republicans like Warren Rudman were introducing it in the Senate, it would be approaching its 20-year anniversary.
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