Jon Chait says the Senate is "the chokepoint for any health care bill" and that's true. But what about the environment in which that chokepoint exists?
The power of the president in the health care fight - particularly this president, with his extraordinary rhetorical skill - is to direct and frame the topics of public discourse. He can set the topics of public conversation and how they unfold by what he chooses to say and the perspective he takes. He arguably has more current power to do this than any other single human being on earth.
I know he's currently on vacation, and that's fine. There's time yet for him to take up the fight. And he can fight when he wants to. Remember the primaries? He did what he had to do to win, and didn't flinch either from throwing himself fully into the fight or using whatever tactics were necessary, both high road and low. He needs to bring that kind of absolute commitment to the health care fight if he's going to win something worth winning. "Bipartisanship" just won't cut it.
Remember Jeremiah Wright and how he turned the sh*tstorm around with the power of his speech on race? He changed the national conversation and put it onto a more productive (and less dangerous for him) track. That's what he needs to do about the right-wing bile about health care reform that's scaring the ConservaDems rightward instead of leftward.
Do you remember how he mobilized people who had never in their lives been involved in politics before to get involved, to organize, to canvass, to call, to donate, to learn about the issues and connect with others to spread the word? That's what he needs to do on health care reform.
Some people think his heart just isn't in it. Or that he's too cerebral. Or that he's really just Bush-lite at heart. Or that his talent is for getting elected and not for governing. I don't believe any of those things. At least not yet. But if he doesn't start putting his political capital on the line soon to get a bill with a strong public option passed, what else is there to think? This was his signature issue.
He needs to argue for it with the morality and compassion a liberal like Roger Ebert knew how to express in his great post on health care reform, I'm safe on board. Pull up the life rope. He needs to bring tears to the eyes of his on-the-fence listeners and shame those who care only about themselves and want to pull up the life rope and watch the less fortunate drown. Thirty years of conservative rule have made selfish people shameless about their selfishness, shameless about expressing their selfishness publicly in town halls and on the posters they hold up at public meetings. He needs to wake people up to the shocking shamelessness of the conservative position on health care, i.e., that health care is a marketable product like any other and that people have no right to it if they can't afford to buy it. Can Obama do that? He could do what needed to be done when his own political future was on the line.
Well, his own political future IS on the line. No matter what people like Jon Chait think, no one is going to believe a failure to actually reform the health care system is the Senate's fault. It will be Obama's fault, Obama's failure.
As far as I'm concerned, a bill with an individual mandate and no public option will be a failure, of epic proportions. If that's what comes out of all this hope of change, like Hunter, I'll be done with Dems for good.