By: Bruce A. Dixon
Source: obamboozled.blogspot.com
By the summer of 2008, Democrats had stopped pretending there was much difference between them and Republicans on foreign policy. Their candidates were younger and smarter, but they weren’t going to stop the wars or bring more than a few of the troops home anytime soon or lift the Cuban blockade. Forget about that stuff, leading Democrats said. Where the Party of Change would deliver for sure, they told voters, would be health care. Voters listened, and delivered Democrats the White House, a crushing majority in the House and a filibuster-proof Senate.
The president’s timetable called for passage of a health care bill in the summer of 2009, but it didn’t happen. The White House blames almost everybody — blue dog Democrats, a handful of right wing Democratic senators, Republican birthers and teabaggers, even the large number of Democrats who want single payer health care or its shadowy stand-in, the public option. But the games are wearing thin. Democrats are running out of time, room and excuses.
Anyone who can add knows Republicans are not blocking universal health care. The performances of Republican teabaggers at a few town halls notwithstanding, there are just not enough Republicans in the House and Senate to block anything. The president and his party can roll over Republican opposition any time they want to.
Blue dog Democrats aren’t to blame for blocking the White House health care bills either. The political careers of many House blue dogs are the creation of White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, who as head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee dispensed them bags of corporate cash to win primary elections against left leaning Democrats. The interests that owned Rahm, and still do, own his successor at DCCC, so the blue dogs are White House puppies it can rein it any time it chooses.
Senator Baucus and a handful of right wing senators are not to blame either. Some are Republicans, who simply don’t matter. They don’t have the votes. And the Senate Democrats with their hands on the bill are all choices of the White House, and all dependent on the good will of that same White House for a percentage of their corporate campaign contributions. Senate Democrats are keenly aware that a sitting president of their own party has literally hundreds of ways to exert pressure on any single legislator. None of them is crossing the White House either.
The only obstacle to passage of the president’s health care — or health insurance legislation is the White House itself. Barack Obama knows better than any of us the difference between what he promised and what is about to be delivered. The undeniable difference is dawning on much of the public too, and is reflected in sagging poll numbers for Democrats and the president. The dozens of Democrats who have declared they will vote against any health care — or health insurance — bill that does not contain what they call a “public option,” are only trying to insulate themselves and protect President Obama from the worst consequences of his own treachery in selling out the vision of universal health care to big pharma and the insurance companies. They aren’t blocking the president’s bill. They’re trying to ensure that there is something in the bill they can defend to the outraged public who elected them to pass health care reform.
