You know I rarely visit the Huffington Post. Not because I dislike Ariana and all she has done, actually I have loved her 90% of the times I have seen her on MSNBC and others.
Actually I guess I avoided it because it was "THE" blog to read and I like to read things that were more "off the radar"(like Kos was back in the day).
But visiting today I saw a editorial there that made my neck snap to attention and so for the first time I will link to the HuffPo...
More below the fold...
In his post The 3 Lost Lessons of Healthcare History: Will Obama Re-Learn Them in Time? he makes some incredible insights which I can only hope you follow the link and read the whole thing for yourself.. but some of the key points I got were this:
Lesson 1: The Center Does Not Hold Without the Left
Not long after Bill Clinton's health care reform proposal went down to defeat in the Senate, Bill ran into Bernie Sanders, Congress's only avowed socialist. Bernie approached him with a grave look on his face. "Mr. President, I am so sorry. I failed you on health care."
Clinton was puzzled. Sanders had supported his reforms. "What do you mean, Bernie?" said Clinton. "You were with me every step of the way!"
"Exactly," replied Sanders. "I should have been burning you in effigy on the steps of the Capitol. Then people would have understood how moderate your plan really was."
I mean damn right, progressives should have been pressing FROM THE GET GO on (and I dont mean US here, cause we were)for Single Payer which would have made the Public Option seem damn conservative by comparison.
The real insight I got from this post was actually something I didnt know about:
Lesson 3: To Win the Middle, Go Left
In July 1964, Ronald Reagan stood before the Republican National Convention to discuss Democrats' "Medicare" proposal to provide guaranteed health insurance for the elderly. "Will you resist the temptation to get a government handout for your community?" Reagan asked. "Realize that the doctor's fight against socialized medicine is your fight. We can't socialize the doctors without socializing the patients. Recognize that government invasion of public power is eventually an assault upon your own business." He didn't mention any death panels, but Reagan and his fellow Republicans were every bit as adamant in their opposition to Medicare as conservatives are in their opposition to health insurance reform today.
A year later, President Lyndon Baines Johnson guided the original Medicare bill through the Congress despite all those Republican objections. But a curious thing happened as the bill neared passage. Once Congressional Republicans saw that Democrats were going to make Medicare a reality despite their scare tactics, many of them quietly switched their votes and supported the bill. In fact, more than 40% of Republican Senators and more than half of the Republicans in the House voted for the bill in the end, despite all the earlier Republican opposition.
Why was this? Why did the Republicans suddenly turn around and vote for Medicare?
John explains:
Faced with a reform that is going to pass with or without them, and which they know their constituents will like, any Republican who might ever have to fight to get re-elected is going to support it, because they don't want to have to explain to their constituents why they voted against their favorite policy. That's how Medicare was passed as a bi-partisan bill: Democrats came together and presented it to Republicans as a done deal, and Republicans got smart and came around.
Now my question is this... will President Obama realize what LBJ (not one of my favorite Presidents by any measure, but one who got a whole lot done) did.
You move the debate by standing up for what you believe in. Will President Obama do that on Wednesday?
I dont know. But I have the highest hopes he will.
And I also hope you will follow the link provided and read the whole thing, cause it is that good.