I’ve noticed a tendency on the part of the mainstream media to propagandize against any real health care reform. It reminds me a bit of the way in which so many media types have often subtlely campaigned against tax increases for the wealthy, which I have always seen as shameless self-interested advocacy on the part of over-paid media types. I suspect that the same dynamic is at play in the media's coverage of health care reform (the media types have gold-plated health care coverage and see the current system as just fine for them and their friends). (Remember how ABC's Charlie Gibson hyper-ventilated over the possibility of tax increases during one of the presidential debates and then did essentially the same thing with regard to the possibility of health care reform in ABC's egregious Town Hall on health care?)
The media campaign against health care reform manifests itself in many ways. An example is the fixation on the costs of health care reform and the willingness to misrepresent those costs as has occurred recently in the repeated use of the discredited CBO estimate of the cost of the bill being taken up by the Senate HELP Committee. (For those of you who do not know, CBO took an incomplete bill that did not contain either the public option or the employer mandate and estimated that it would cost $1T over 10 years and would provide coverage for only 16M additional Americans).
Fast forward to the Sunday issue of the Washington Post, which contains a long story explaining that it is counter-productive for progressive organizations to lobby the centrist Democratic senators who have been parroting industry positions. Here is the lead-in to the story, which is written by Ceci Connolly:
In the high-stakes battle over health care, a growing cadre of liberal activists is aiming its sharpest firepower against Democratic senators who they accuse of being insufficiently committed to the cause.
The attacks -- ranging from tart news releases to full-fledged advertising campaigns -- have elicited rebuttals from lawmakers and sparked a debate inside the party over the best strategy for achieving President Obama's top priority of a comprehensive health-system overhaul.
The rising tensions between Democratic legislators and constituencies that would typically be their natural allies underscore the high hurdles for Obama as he tries to hold together a diverse, fragile coalition. Activists say they are simply pressing for quick delivery of "true health reform," but the intraparty rift runs the risk of alienating centrist Democrats who will be needed to pass a bill.
Somehow Connolly distorts things so that now the "tensions" between progressive groups and the recalcitrant Democratic senators are the obstacle to health care reform problem rather than the purchased Democratic senators being the obstacle that they are.
Several of the senators targeted by the grass roots campaign are quoted offering arrogant reactions to the ongoing campaign, most notably Senators Dianne Feinstein and Ron Wyden.
Connolly tracks down an ANONYMOUS "democratic strategist" (allegedly working full time on the health care issue) whom she describes as "apoplectic over what he called wasted time, energy and resources by the organizations." Here's the anonymous strategist's notion as to what should be done instead of the ongoing grass roots campaign:
The strategist, who asked for anonymity because he was criticizing colleagues, said: "These are friends of ours. I would much rather see a quiet call placed by [Obama chief of staff] Rahm Emanuel saying this isn't helpful. Instead, we try to decimate them?"
Usually when this kind of a story makes the front page of the Washington Post, it means that the senators really don't like the heat!! Keep the pressure on, especially on the senators named in the story: Ben Nelson (NE), Kay Hagan (NC), Mary Landrieu (LA), Arlen Specter (PA), Dianne Feinstein (CA), and Ron Wyden (OR).