Compromise, Defined
By all accounts the White House wants a deal, any deal, on health care. Mr. Obama's objective seems to be to claim credit for "reform" legislation, thus scoring (hypothetical) political points. Democrats in Congress seem amenable. But nobody should overestimate the intelligence of our President or our legislators, particularly legislators from the Democratic Party. Stepping outside the mainstream reality show, it looks very much like Mr. Obama is stampeding the Democrats into a compromise that a majority of them don't really want. And if they were a little bit smarter they would ask themselves what happens if a watered down compromise — a give-away to the insurers, drug companies, and health profiteers — is clearly shown within a few years (say by 2012) not only not to have worked but actually to have made things worse? You'd think that this question might be asked somewhere in the public mix, perhaps prominently, but I haven't yet seen it.
We have contending polls to interpret. On the one hand large majorities favor health care reform. Up into the seventy percent range. On the other, different polls, of those who already have health insurance, show equally or even larger majorities are content with their plans. Without trying to interpret the statistics exactly it's fairly obvious that both findings can't simultaneously be true. And common sense suggests that what pollsters are trying to measure is a deep sense of discontent coupled with a realistic fear of losing coverage. The political bottom line: a "reform" effort that doesn't work will make a lot of people angry.
Is it reasonable to think that proposals for "reform" from the gang of six will help matters? Will our sclerotic Senate improve, in any way, legislation produced by the House? Again, I'm no expert, but from what I've read the answer is clearly no. As in never. So why aren't Democrats anxious that the poisoned fruit of compromise might eventually cause them serious political pain?
In modern times, again and again and again we've seen the Congress stampeded into action, whether it's approval for bombing Serbia, passing the Patriot Act, invading Iraq, or giving trillions to Wall Street, to mention only a very few illustrative cases. The big difference this time — one might have to go all the way back to the Carter era to find a similar situation — is that the Democrats have not positioned themselves politically to take advantage of failure (as the Republicans instinctively do), but almost certainly will wind up taking the blame.
Thus the elephant appears to have screwed the donkey, a most unnatural act.
Posted by George Kenney on September 9, 2009 5:41 AM 
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Comments
The notion that, as Bill Clinton famously said: ' 'working people will vote for me, what choice do they have?' (or something similar) is only true in it's defeatism. I have stated the case for the third part here before.
Writers such as David Sirota (a colleague of George's at In These Times) in The Uprising makes the case that third party influence can be the changing vote in Republican/Democratic stalemate or obstinacy.
Posted by: loninappleton | September 9, 2009 1:03 PM
I think its not just time for a third party but for term limits...
I have had enough. Republicans, Democrats, liberals and conservatives...
What bull-sheet rock 95% of our elected officials on the Hill are full of themselves and the ones who will either get screwed or thrown under the bus are those who are really in need.
Let both parties do something positive and make me look like a jerk by actually passing a true reform bill...
Posted by: I Can Just Scream! | September 9, 2009 11:29 PM