Hullabaloo

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

 
Sacrifice

by digby


Uhm, I hate to bring this up because nobody wants to hear about it, but this remains a problem:

Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI) issued a statement today on the White House's health care reform proposal:

I was pleased to see that President Obama's health care proposal did not include several of the sweetheart deals provided to select states in the Senate bill. Unfortunately, the President's proposal encompasses the Senate language allowing public funding of abortion. The Senate language is a significant departure from current law and is unacceptable. While the President has laid out a health care proposal that brings us closer to resolving our differences, there is still work to be done before Congress can pass comprehensive health care reform.

Stupak is lying, of course. The egregious Nelson Amendment, like the egregious Stupak amendment changes the current law to the extent that it extends the tentacles of the egregious Hyde Amendment into the private sector. Nelson just does it slightly less egregiously than Stupak.

Nobody knows for sure how many votes he has in his pocket, but with the vote as tight as it is, it's likely that he has enough. Either everyone is putting their fingers in their ears and singing "lalalalalala" or they are preparing to give Stupak what he wants.

The egregious Nelson amendment isn't good enough for the forced pregnancy crusaders. They are determined to force women down on their knees and make them give up even more of their ability to exercise their constitutional rights to secure this comprehensive health care reform. That's going to be the deal.

But, as I have written befor, some permutation of this is always the deal:

Universal health care is something any decent, wealthy society shouldn't even have to think twice about. It's a global embarrassment that the United States, the chest thumping superpower, is even having this debate at this late date. It's equally embarrassing that we have put together a Frankenstein of a system because our democratic government is in league with wealthy interests which are exploiting its people. It's hard to believe that anyone would call that system liberal, much less socialist, but as you can see every day on Fox news, it's set off a tantrum among a vocal minority that would hardly be less hysterical if aliens from a foreign planet landed in Washington. (And that hysteria is also a tool of the permanent establishment, funded by big money, and used as a way of keeping the debate focused on the right, even if it's taking on an absurdist quality.)

Any legislation such as health care reform must therefore be tempered by a liberal sacrifice, something real, a principle that will make them hate themselves and loathe each other for having done it. It cannot be a clean victory, lest they come to believe they can do more. In the end, the "moral" must always be that you cannot go too far left.

The Stupak amendment was designed to do just that, a power move easily predicted by anyone who has watched the way policy victories are managed over the last couple of decades. The one consistent characteristic is that they are never unambiguously positive for the left. The arguments are always self-servingly pragmatic --- "blue dogs have to vote their district" --- but the real purpose is to drive home the absolute certainty that liberals are never really in charge. That is why there is never any desire among the ruling elite to sell the idea that liberalism itself -- its philosophy, its values, its ideology --- is something positive with which a majority of people, including Blue Dogs, can identify.

If the public ever came to believe that, who knows what might happen?

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digby 2/23/2010 06:00:00 PM |