PASSAGE OF HEALTH REFORM
A HOPE FOR OUR FUTURE!
"But what this struggle has taught us―about ourselves and about this country―is so much bigger than any one issue, because it's reminded us what so many of us learned all those months ago on a cold January night here in Iowa, and that's that change is never easy, but it's always possible. It comes not from the halls of power, but from the hearts of our people. Amid setbacks, it requires perseverance. Amid calls for delay, it requires the fierce urgency of now. In the face of unrelenting cynicism, it requires unyielding hope."
-- Barack Obama, Iowa, March 25, 2010
March 24 the Woman's National Democratic Club issued the following statement on the historic occasion of the passage of comprehensive health care legislation:
WOMAN'S NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC CLUB HAILS PASSAGE OF HEALTH CARE REFORM LEGISLATION
Speaker Nancy Pelosi, her leadership team and 219 members of the House have demonstrated that Democrats understand politics as the art of the possible when people of strongly held divergent views can find compromise for the common good. They have achieved this in the face of unprecedented misrepresentation of the facts and innuendo directed against the President and Democratic members of the House and Senate.
The Woman's National Democratic Club salutes those who have labored over the complexities inevitable in attempting to restructure the unwieldy structure of public and private entities that represent a significant portion of the American economy. We offer our congratulations to not only the Members of the House and Senate, but also to the Committee Chairs and professional staff who have grappled effectively with the conflicting and often perverse incentives that influence health care financing and delivery.
President Obama's signature on this landmark legislation is a big step toward improving access and quality of care to millions of Americans across the economic and age spectrum. It is essential that we all exercise patience as the various changes are phased in over the coming months and years. It is equally essential that the Administration continue to press for more clinically appropriate and cost-effective care. The Woman's National Democratic Club welcomes the opportunity to play a continued role in this process.
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COMMENT
UNACCEPTABLE POLITICAL EXTREMISM: NO EQUALITY BETWEEN DEMOCRATIC AND REPUBLICAN PARTIES
Following the passage of health care reform, Democratic congressmen and women were the victims of violent attacks usually on their home offices. Reaction to this violence pointed up the craziness of equating the "extremes" of the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. What is wrong with a headline in the New York Times: "From the left charges of stoking anger, from the right, of politicizing incidents"? The fact is that the vandalism is meant to stoke anger and the incidents are, in fact, political, not "politicized."
Some of the vandalism appears to have been instigated by an Alabama blogger, Mike Vanderboegh, who encouraged his readers to throw bricks at the windows of Democratic headquarters across the country. Vanderboegh, a former leader of the Alabama Constitutional Militia who is headlining an open-carry gun rally in Northern Virginia next month, issued a call to the modern "Sons of Liberty" on his libertarian political blog to break windows nationwide to display opposition to health care reform. One vandal attached a note with Barry Goldwater's "extremism in defense of liberty is no vice."
Vanderboegh took credit for one incident. "I guess that guy's one of ours," he said.
Where are laws on incitement to violence? Vanderboegh should be arrested. That would be "government interference" I can live with.
Compare the tactics of the extreme right with the "extreme" left. Congressman Bart Stupak, who came to his senses in time to bring on board seven anti-choice colleagues to vote for the bill, is Michael Moore's congressman. Moore ("Capitalism: A Love Story") sent around an email blast with the following story:
"Hundreds of my neighbors here in his Michigan district spent the weekend organizing thousands of voters to get busy and save the health care bill. We called Stupak's congressional office nonstop and flooded his email box.… And then a rare thing happened: An elected representative did what the people told him to do.… Hey, all we did here in northern Michigan was let him know that we would be unceremoniously tossing him out of Congress in this Augusts' Democratic primary. One of our group announced she would oppose him in the Democratic primary. That seemed to register with him." Maybe Bart Stupak didn't just "come to his senses." But what did the "extreme" Moore do, throw rocks? Horror of horrors, he got someone to run against Stupak in the primary.
But back to the polarized American politics where extreme right and extreme left is supposed to be equal. One of the anti-Health care reform gang, in town for the House vote on the reform bill, stood on a street corner two blocks from the WNDC with a sign I never thought I'd see: a picture of Obama with a Hitler moustache on his face and the words "Impeach Obama" beneath. Now that's extremism. Hitler and the Nazi party had real "death panels" exterminating six million Jews and euthanizing the old or weak. The Tea Partiers want to abolish the Department of Education and the Federal Reserve. That is extremism. Protestors at the Capital were throwing racial epithets at Congressman John Lewis and anti-gay epithets at Congressman Barney Frank. That is extremism. Are we supposed to label the far left "extreme" for supporting the health care reform that the rest of the industrialized world already has?
Equating the "extreme" right and "extreme" left must stop. They have nothing in common.
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AT THE WNDC
Before Health Reform Passed: Celinda Lake on the Democrats' Numbers
March 18 Democratic Party pollster Celinda Lake spoke to the WNDC on results of recent polling by her group. The polls―taken before passage of healthcare reform―were not encouraging for either the Democratic Party or the President. Especially discouraging was the finding that women voters were losing enthusiasm, and the Democratic Party was losing independent women (VA, MA and NJ). The 2010 election will depend on women voters―and turnout. Obama has a problem with blue-collar workers. He took too long making up his mind on Afghanistan. His debating Republicans on health care looked weak to the working class viewer. He is supposed to come across as stronger, more macho for them.
Voters think economic recovery is a long way away, that stimulus money has gotten little return, and believe health rates will go up. The Tea Party is perceived positively; only Democratic women are against it.
On health care: numbers are improving but no one has any idea what is in the bill. Lake's message: Sell it! Tell small business how it is going to benefit! (Lake's own small business has had a 30% increase in premiums this year). Of course the Republicans are not helping. According to Lake, some states have prevented the Administration from getting its message out. In Virginia you are not allowed to put up a sign saying, "Paid for with your Recovery Act dollars" at a site benefiting from stimulus funds (note: Maryland does permit these signs and they are widespread).
More than selling, Democrats need to turn the economy around. It is actually not reassuring to voters to say you won't lose your health care if you lose your job, because they don't want to lose their jobs! Americans are hurting. Lake thinks Democrats should attack three subjects: Wall Street reform, health care and jobs. In Lake's polls "getting the economy going tests well (as does "deficits down").
The Administration needs to keep a sense of momentum. The Democrats don't have until November to sell their programs, only until May or June. An effective message is that the Republicans "will take us in the wrong direction" (attacking Rush Limbaugh is not effective). The Republicans, on their side, are saying they are a "new" (not Bush) Republican Party and they are having success selling this message.
Comment: And what about this "new" Republican Party? Is the new Republican Party the one ready to go throw rocks after the health reform passes? Good macho move? Then again, is it all a matter of branding? Send Americans to the store to buy "New Republican" blue jeans? Maybe substance will win out in the end. In the wake of health care passage the Administration gets back momentum and if it gets passage of Wall Street regulation it can check off two of Lake's three key issues.
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The Political Dispatch is a publication of the Public Policy Committee.
Woman's National Democratic Club, 1526 New Hampshire Ave., NW, Washington,
DC 20036
Phone: 202/232-7363 Fax 202/986-2791 www.democraticwoman.org
Comments to the Editor: info@democraticwoman.org Betsy Spiro Clark,
Editor
