AP:
Senior House Democrats have largely abandoned hopes of including a government-run insurance option in the final compromise health care bill taking shape, according to several officials, and are pushing for other measures to rein in private insurers.
Okay, this is where I traditionally caution what I call the Magnet Ballers--reference to 6yos' style of playing soccer--that this report may or may not mean anything substantive. Could be a trial balloon. Could be a smokescreen. Could be somebody's personal agenda being pushed.
The main takeaway is that, of course, we never really know because we're not privy to all the wheelings and dealings behind the scenes and depend, therefore, upon reports from the inside. Sure some reporters--even bloggers!--have good contacts that might have some info, but all of this stuff is run through so many filters that its veracity is rather doubtful.
So what can we do? How about be engaged citizens and do a little responsible legwork of our own?
I know everybody's busy surviving, and of course the holidays took their toll, but if we've been given a Republic and HCR is an issue at least as important as Civil Rights, couldn't we step up our game a little bit? There are plenty of comforts and distractions that demand our time, but they'll be there tomorrow after we've won this fight
I've been told that the netroots has done all it could because, afterall, Jane and FDL had that whip count tool! That's not even a strawman on my part, FWIW.
Yes, some A-listers have written wonderful things excoriating Obama and the Dems for their complicity in this madness. Some A-listers have admonished their readers to "light up" the switchboards. Some A-listers have even made nifty little "online activism" tools.
Activism, by definition, cannot be done online. At best you can be an online advocate. At the worst and most passive you can delude yourself into thinking that expressing your opinion in an email or another damned Internet petition is activism.
Activism requires being, you know...active. Not necessarily getting into the streets, but certainly out of your chair and really, a bit out of your comfort zone. Most importantly, it means not relying on proxies to do your work for you.
Lemme tell you a story about FDL's whip count. Back during the debate about Afghan appropriations, Jane heard from one of her People On The Hill that my Representative, Peter Welch, was going to vote for the resolution, which we progs did not want to pass. That was odd, I thought, because he'd voted no on the measure previously. So I e-mailed his Legislative Assistant and learned that, in fact, he was going to continue his opposition (which he did in the final vote).
Lesson The First, Grasshopper: don't accept what somebody tells you somebody else said about somebody else. To steal from Sean Connery, if you don't want a rotten apple, go to the tree, not the barrel.
That was an act of information gathering, of course, not an attempt to effect change. Obviously one could turn such a contact around and make it into an expression of opinion in hopes of swaying one's Congressmember. But that only goes so far.
I was in Harry Reid's office one day back in December 2007 during some controversial debate--I honestly cannot remember if it was Iraq appropriations or some other nonsense. Phones were ringing off the hook with constituents weighing in, but during a brief lull I chatted with one of the Senator's staffers about the efficacy of phone calls. She told me they don't pass every message along individually, but make a general note about the volume of calls regarding a particular issue and convey the overall sense to Reid.
In other words, "lighting up" the switchboards has about as much impact as any other polling: next to nil. Frankly, if polling really mattered we'd have single-payer right now and I wouldn't be typing this much. Such communication is valuable, absolutely, in setting down our demands, but doesn't put any political, economic or otherwise tangible pressure on a politician. Call all you want, but lacking a physical presence--say...chatting with staff in Reid's office--you more than likely are not going to achieve your aim of swaying an opinion and vote.
Now let me think...who is in Congressional offices every day? Oh yeah, lobbyists. In fact, when Ericka and I went to visit Welch's LA back in May, the visitor signed into the office log just before us was a Lockheed Martin rep.
I know not everybody can be in their Congressmembers' faces every day like a K-Streeter. However, we all can build up some level of relationship with our elected employees by making regular contact with them (e.g., through electronic means) and following up with more individual and/or collective actions on a less frequent basis (e.g., meeting with Reps and Senators during "district work periods").
We can certainly congratulate ourselves for what we've attempted so far, and use that as an excuse for being passive now in the face of continued mendacity. It's not clear to me what more aggressive tactics would be really possible or effective--I do have some ideas--but what is clear to me is that we have not done enough. Now's not the time to quit, but to escalate and try new things.
And we really do need to keep fighting the good fight rather than just accepting the shit sandwich that's being presented to us. Fix The Billers: you told us the Senate bill could be remedied in reconciliation (which ain't happening) and/or conference (which ain't happening), so what exactly are you going to do now?
Over at Pax Americana my regular 198 Sundays feature has been on hiatus. I'm reviving that in the HCR context. In the coming days and weeks--because that's all the time we have before this fake reform is entrenched--I'll talk more about specific concrete actions everybody can take that collectively gives us an excellent chance of creating space for Obama and the Democrats to fulfill a campaign promise other than escalating in Afghanistan.
A few actions in other milieux for you to ponder in the meantime:
- From 2005: Sponsored by the Women and Girls Foundation of Western Pennsylvania, a group of 23 girls...initiated a "girl-cott" against T-shirts being sold by popular teen retailer Abercrombie and Fitch. The girls find these T-shirts offensive and I have to say that I agree. A few slogans on the front of the shirts:
* Who Needs brains when you have these?
* Blondes are adored, brunettes are ignored.
* I make you look fat.
The girls decided that they are demeaning and offensive and the girls started their "girl-cott". Their effort caught the attention of NBC's Today Show and the media onslaught began - MSNBC, CNN, and all the other major televised news outlets picked up the story. This past Friday, Abercrombie and Fitch announced that it would stop selling some of these offensive T-shirts. Chalk one up for a visible coalition of 23 principled girls and some media attention.
- March 2009: There was a rally scheduled...regarding AIDS policy where activists were going to unveil their "50 day report card". when the Obama team found out they were going to get Fs, they called the organizers to ask what they could do to not get bad grades and proposed they meet to discuss the issues. That never happened during the Bush Era.
- July 2009: According to data from the Center for Responsive Politics, Boeing and Lockheed Martin, manufacturers of the F-22, have given nearly $1.4 million in campaign contributions to 50 senators and spent nearly $9 million lobbying Congress as they fight to keep the expensive yet unwanted fighter jets in the budget. [Lobbying efforts by Code Pink and other organizations and individuals helped convince Obama to threaten a veto if F-22 funding were included in appropriations, and lead to the Senate and House killing it.]
Extrapolate from those small victories achieved by small groups and consider the power of larger mobilization. So what do you say, A-listers, Twitterers, MoveOn, Labor, et al? Game to try?
ntodd
(x-posted at Dohiyi Mir)