It is The Democratic Leadership Destroying Reform

We hear it all the time: “but we need 60 votes in the Senate to pass anything“.  “We can’t do anything without 60 votes.”

But it is a lie.

They, in fact, can pass meaningful Health Care Reform, if they really wanted to, the exact same way that George W. Bush passed his various numerous Tax giveaways for the rich, Corporate Welfare bills, and other corrupt, unpopular legislation, with just 51 votes.

The idea that what Sen. Grassley thinks or does matters one damn bit in this whole debate is not really true.

Once again, the fundamental problem here is that The Democratic Party refuses to use it’s political power.  We see this over and over and over:

• Whether its refusing to investigate and impeach Dick Cheney (an unpopular War Criminal with an 18% approval rating)
• Or refusing to investigate and impeach George Bush (perhaps the most unaccomplished and unpopular President in U.S. History)
• Or whether it is refusing to cut off the War Funding and stop the unnecessary bloodshed and chaos overseas.
• Or whether it is refusing to enforce House subpeonas by backing them with the threat of House arrest.
• Or refusing to uphold the U.S. Constitution and the rule of law on any front.
  

• Or whether its walking backwards progressive legislative goals, despite Election victories, even before any Congressional debate commences.
• Or whether it is deliberately shutting out the progressive voices from any public representation altogether, even as they pocket the campaign money that they begged us for.

The truth is that Obama is not focused on passing meaningful HCR at all, he is focused on passing a “Bipartisan” (Republican approved) bill — which by definition means the teeth of the reform itself necessarily have to be jettisoned.  

There is no reason on earth why Obama had to make Max Baucus and Chuck Grassley the centerpiece and gatekeepers of any Health Care effort (note that the full Senate Finance Committee members who are more sypathetic are not even allowed to be involved in the markup of the Bill emerging from that Finance Committee — just the 4 or 5 people who are hostile to Health Care Reform). It is only from the absence of any leadership, that Baucus and Grassley have gained the upper hand in Washington.

There is also no reason why Obama had to begin the debate with an enforcement that there would be zero dicusssion of a single-payer system, and zero representation from single-payer advocates.  In fact, only a detailed public debate and cost analysis of the single-payer system would have set the whole discussion in the proper context and provided a yardstick by which to measure the current corrupt and broken system.

Obama could have easily opened up the Health Reform table to include single-payer advocates and thereby made the “public option” seem like a major concession (which it really is) rather than the “LEFTY” solution. Instead he set the public option up to fail, by just dangling that out there as both the starting point and the ceiling of the debate as bait for which “bipartison” compromise was scheduled as the inevitable next step in the process.

The sad thing is that Obama knows (from past speeches if we are to believe him) that a single-payer system is really the answer, but he doesn’t want to sign up and be the one to ever stand up and fight for it. In fact, Obama once said that we can’t get a single-payer system until the day comes where the Democrats regain majorities in the House and the Senate and win back the White House.

But those are exactly the lucky cards that were dealt to him. So where’s the fight?

The truth is we don’t need 60 votes, yet Obama and Harry Reid, and most members of the Democratic Senate, are trying to fool people into thinking that their hands are tied and they have no choice but to offer up phony reform (essentially just more Private Insurance Monopoly subsidies) because they don’t have this magic figure of 60 votes.

They don’t need 60 votes.

A real leader would have used the bullypulpit to argue the case publically for Single-Payer, then laid out all the facts to the public in an educational Televised Address to the Nation, and then brought it through the Senate with just 50 votes and a tie-breaking vote from the Vice-President, if necessary, for the good of the Nation.

Neither president John Kennedy, nor Lyndon Johnson, ever pre-emptively walked back the whole discussion, when they faced similar opposition to Kennedy’s Medicare Reform idea in the 1960s. Instead, by sticking to their guns they eventually got enough votes (after the 1964 Election picked up Democrats) to get it through.

But what we see today, is the entire Democratic leadership setting up false argument after false argument, to stunt the public debate on this issue and to shutoff the oxygen for a discussion and definition of what meaningful reform really means, by parading around the phony idea that “we need 60 votes” to do anything.

First of all, you never need 60 votes or any votes for that matter to stand up, make the case, place the truth into the public record, and begin the process of building coalitions.  Secondly, we have seen the leaders in the GOP (from Reagan to Bush Jr) long use their position quite effectively to argue and influence the public and Congress into supporting previously unpopular concepts and unpopular legislation that was once completely unthinkable (and even unconstitutional). Do we ever see the GOP shrink away from using their power, and every parlimentary device in the book, to get what they want or to block what they want to block?  Of course not.

You cannot possibly lead on any issue in the World, much less a contentious one, by a process of voluntary capitulation and a cycle of ever retreating messages. Despite the town halls and the GOP lies and distortions, it is really the Democratic Party here that is destroying Health Care Reform because they setup the whole debate for failure, rather than take a leadership modus operandi on the issue.

They should have said to the GOP and the Blue Dogs from day one, “look we’ll find 50 votes in favor of reform whether you like or not”, and then put them on the defensive and scrambling for a way to stay relevant. But I am tired of everyone on TV, everyone in the Senate, and the White House throwing up this canard about requiring 60 votes.

We only need 50 votes.

And if you fight for that and still don’t get it on the first try, then you base the 2010 Campaign on getting this done, and campaign against the obstructers.