Experience has abundantly proved to me that to every honest man there come in his life occasions for parting of ways which I have termed "Non-co-operation". - MK Gandhi
Yes, I want to abort the Health Care Deform Bill of 2010.
It's defective. It's not even viable. It's a divide and conquer wedge that throws table scraps at a variety of groups who will be even less likely to mobilize to fix things once they get their slice of the pie--the have nots are typically more generous than the haves, who rarely give up what they have.
Even though I realistically think that HCR will come from an Island Hopping Campaign (state-by-state efforts until we reach critical mass) the problem is that it really will be harder to mobilize constituencies to fight for others. Labor got their Cadillac compromise and now, after threatening to withdraw support from Dems in 2010, is supporting the bill. Plenty of people have told me we must pass the bill because it will benefit them. I'm certainly sympathetic, but when do we help the rest of the people?
I admit to thinking I had the luxury of holding my moral, philosophical position when it was really moot: the bill was going to pass despite the reservations a lot of progs and I had. But now it seems that, at least for a brief time, the House might not even have the votes to pass the Senate bill and reconciliation--that which was supposed to save us--is still up in the air.
The thing that puzzles me about the "fix it later" (in any of the proposed variants) is this: how the fuck are you going to fix anything when there has been no resolve to stand for the right things in the first place? Are the Dems really all of a sudden going to stick together and get rid of Stupak, restore the public option, allow States to implement their own single-payer programs, and actually cover everybody?
We already have seen our position erode because the Dems and the People have capitulated at every turn. Single-payer became the PO. Reproductive freedom was restricted. Mandates were introduced. States had to get waivers. The PO was tossed aside.
It seems to me we've shown we cannot hold the line. And we're already starting from scratch, which is one of the reasons why some folks want to pass the bill as-is. But when you stop to think about it, we wouldn't have to start over on building a 1000-page Frankenstein monster when we already have a short and simple solution available in HR676 and Medicare For All.
Readers might be wondering why I would think, after saying Dems won't be able to fix things, that we could pass something "extreme" like HR676. Simple: because we'll have burned our ships and all pols have their own survival in mind.
The Dems know they have to pass something, which is why Obama et al are so desperate just to get this thing done. They need to declare Mission Accomplished so they can move on to other meaty election year legislation. Take away this particular bill--which is NOT the same as killing HCR itself--and they must get something out lest more Dems and Indies bail on them in November for not doing enough.
One of the big political optics problems is if nothing comes out of Congress, people will blame the Dems. Yes, that's absolutely true if they don't actually use their majority position effectively. So instead of reacting to the GOP, they need to become proactive and get inside the Republican OODA loop.
But how to deal with the Mythical Sixty Vote Threshold? Currently, almost all business in the Senate is conducted through unanimous consent agreements. That fundamentally means the Majority and Minority have agreed to suspend the rules and usual rights Senators have in favor of a streamlining process. Generally that makes sense because there's so much business before the chamber that little would progress if they didn't bypass parliamentary procedure.
UCs can only be implemented if nobody objects (duh, they're unanimous). Otherwise, Senate rules as they stand must apply. Because the Majority hears the siren song of bipartisanship in the collegial Senate, they oft agree to skipping the real filibuster and cloture rules and agree that 60 votes are required for certain big ticket items, like HCR.
So the Democratic Caucus could, if it showed some spine (and perhaps we helped give them spine, eh?), have a Senator Sanders or Senator Feingold object and the 60 vote requirement evaporates. Yes, the GOP could filibuster and use plenty of other parliamentary tactics to delay debate and floor votes. And guess who then is shown to be obstructionists?
Real filibusters are hard to maintain. Even if the GOP and Lieberman could sustain one, all that does is give us time to further mobilize direct action to pressure "moderate" Republicans and Blue Dogs to get on board.
Direct action, not donating to groups who promise to run TV ads and other vague action in the future. Not joining text and mailing lists. Not petitions. Not emails. Not phone call barrages.
All of those things are nice and useful in the beginning of a struggle. Not so much at the 11th hour.
I mean national, distributed marches in every state supporting what the majority of Americans want. A follow up march in DC. Massive lobbying on the Hill and in-district. Boycotts. Strikes. Civil disobedience. Strategically applying a variety of the 198 Methods of Nonviolent Resistance, from low-level protest to physical and economic intervention that completely disrupts the status quo.
March For Lifers always mobilize on this very day. We need to be more active to counter their protests, not to mention legislative and judicial tactics. We need to say we won't compromise on our core beliefs, like the absolute right to choose.
NOW has come out against the bill (those silly, emotional women!) because it erodes reproductive freedom, and said it in 2010 won't support candidates who
vote for it. It's a great threat, but we saw labor play the same game and back down, so let's have something tangible to back it up. I looked on the action page at NOW and at NARAL, but there's really no out-of-your-chair
stuff, which is what we desperately need if we're to win the definitive civil rights struggle of our time.
If every person who told me "that shit'll never work" (because of the current political climate, it ain't the 60s, etc) actually tried to help make it work, it possibly could. But we've been rendered meaningless by our continued collective capitulation as every outrage has been thrown at us.
I don't have a big platform, so my calls for action are less audible than a 'yopp' on a speck of dust, but there are plenty of activist organizations that do have access to large audiences (and those organizations ignore as much my ideas as everybody else does, believe me). I wonder what it would look like if they really committed to fighting for true reform and universal health coverage? How about it, Labor, MoveOn, NOW, NARAL, Netroots...direct action, escalation, a strategic effort beyond just issuing demands?
We have begun our work knowing full well that it will be difficult. Having sacrificed everything, if we fail, it is not failure but success. Because in that failure lies our well-being and that of others. - MK Gandhi
Conflict hurts. No outcome is guaranteed. Yet if we stick to our principles and fight for what we believe is right to our utmost, we cannot fail.
That's not just some bullshit I-read-it-in-college New Age happy claptrap: we guarantee failure if we don't try at all. If we honestly apply ourselves to the cause, we actually have decent odds of winning. Not without sacrifice. Not without pain. Not even without some damage to our ultimate objective sometimes.
But in the end we know we fought for our own well-being and that of others, and that sets the stage for our future efforts to achieve justice. Passively accepting what the power structure shoves down our throats gains us nothing and provides no platform for continued struggle. Kill the bill so we can get to work on what we really need: reform that covers not just union members, not just men's health, not just 93% of America, but all of us.
ntodd
(Post at Pax Americana, Dohiyi Mir, Green Mountain Code Pink, Corrente and Daily Kos.)