No Public Option
Even Obama's "signature" health-care law left the "base" frustrated because the process became so bogged down in futile efforts to woo Republicans, such as Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe; so compromised to appease insurance industry defenders like independent Sen. Joe Lieberman; and so convoluted to buy the votes of conservative Democrats, like Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska.
Even though Obama claimed to support a "public" or government-run insurance option as the best way to create real competition for the insurance industry, he jettisoned it without a fight. He accepted an industry-friendly plan that tells Americans that they must buy private health insurance, an old-time Republican idea that ironically Republican state officials and GOP-appointed judges are now attacking as unconstitutional.
In perhaps the ultimate irony, Republican justices on the U.S. Supreme Court might well strike down the private-sector mandate at the heart of the health-care law because it leaves Americans no option other than to buy a private commodity, a health insurance policy. In other words, it lacks a "public option." If that happens, Obama will have little to show for all his concessions to Sens. Snowe, Lieberman and Nelson.
In a Washington Post op-ed on Wednesday, liberal columnist Harold Meyerson rated as mixed what he called Obama's two-year "progressive-reform period," much less impressive than the accomplishments of FDR and Lyndon Johnson but more substantive than those of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton.
Meyerson noted, too, that Carter and Clinton had larger Democratic majorities than Obama had and did not face endless GOP filibusters. "In fairness to Obama, he, unlike his predecessors, had to overcome filibusters on virtually every bill," Meyerson wrote.
Meyerson also cited a key handicap that Obama had in common with Carter and Clinton.
"Unlike Roosevelt and Johnson, the three most recent Democratic presidents all suffered from a lack of left-wing street heat," Meyerson wrote. "What distinguishes Obama -- and Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid -- is that they pushed through so much legislation despite the absence of legions demanding progressive change (though there was a very effective mass lobby, if not a mass movement, for repealing the military's "don't ask, don't tell' ban)."
In other words, Meyerson recognized that the American Left has allowed its ability to rally the people to wither away. As late as the 1960s and the early 1970s, the Left could bring great pressure to bear for passage of landmark laws, ending racial segregation and providing medical care for the elderly.
However, during the late 1970s, the Left, which had held an advantage in media and think tanks, opted to downsize or decommission those institutions in favor of an emphasis on "local organizing."
The Right took a different course, investing billions of dollars in expanding its outreach to rank-and-file Americans. Over the next three decades, the Right waged a national "war of ideas" against a Left that had largely disarmed itself.
Reaganism's Triumph
Ronald Reagan's "government is the problem" message was promoted via print publications, by a stable of well-paid newspaper and TV commentators, on AM radio stations across the country, and later on Fox News and the Internet. "Liberal" was turned into a dirty word that politicians had to avoid. Any suggestion that the government could help solve a national problem was denounced as silly socialism.
Even as Reagan's trickle-down economics failed to improve the lot of the average American -- though making the upper crust all the richer -- Reagan's supply-side theories remained dominant, resistant to any and all evidence.
In the 1990s, Clinton raised marginal tax rates on the wealthy and the nation enjoyed one of its most sustained periods of job creation, which came with the additional prospect of retiring the entire federal debt. However, after Bush managed to steal Election 2000 from Al Gore, the Republicans insisted on another dose of Reaganism, more tax cuts for the rich.
The strategy -- compounded by Bush's two wars paid for entirely by borrowing -- ended in an economic catastrophe, combining record federal deficits, failed banks, massive unemployment and home foreclosures.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
1
