(10 am – promoted by ek hornbeck)
If you are anything like me, you vacillate between: Yes, we can, I hope we can, and who the hell are we kidding.
While I’ve always “sort of” been interested in politics, I fell in love with the good rebel, Dr. Dean in 04. It was the first time in my life that I felt “we the people” had any power, let alone “the power”. After all, who can ever forget the What I Want to Know speech by our internet interloper.
Like Obama today for so many, Dean lead me to dailykos, activism, and the belief that we could make a difference; and then, he/we lost with the help of the corporate media and our very own Democratic Party. With that loss, Kerry’s 04 capitulation, and the on-going dismal performance of the minority and majority Dems in the House and Senate, I really began to doubt that we had any power at all.
So, you ask, what the hell does any of this have to do with health care? The simple answer is sometimes we can make a difference. (more)
Emphasis is mine…
Pressured by progressive activists who objected to the tepid language in a draft document prepared by the Barack Obama campaign, the Democratic platform-writing committee reworked the party’s official agenda Saturday to include a clear commitment “that every American man, woman and child be guaranteed to have affordable, comprehensive health care.”
— snip —The platform is likely to adopted without a fight at the Denver convention where Illinois Senator Barack Obama will be nominated for president.
What is significant about the platform committee’s endorsement of language calling for guaranteed health care for all is that the statement goes a good deal further than the Obama campaign would have preferred.
Obama’s camp, which dominates but does not entirely control the platform-writing process, wanted to avoid talk of guarantees. It also wanted language that was friendlier to the insurance industry. Progressive Democrats for America, working in conjunction with a number of Pennsylvania organizations and Democratic leaders that support single-payer health care, pushed for a deeper commitment to health-care reform.
— snip —
But the strengthening of the platform language is significant. It shows that the Obama campaign, which is often too rigid for its own good, is willing to listen to the left – and even to bend a bit. That’s the good news from the fight over a platform that is, by and large, a tepid document.
I don’t know which makes me happier. The strengthened commitment to health care, progressives winning, or Obama’s willingness to listen to the progressive community.
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Is this there way of buying off their base for letting them sell them out on foreign policy, wiretapping, torture and letting bush and cheney pass go without going to jail?
they are compromisers not advocates. Who they are compromising with? Themselves? Pretty good trick but really doesn’t make sense as the word compromise means
1. n. A mutual settlement of a dispute…..settlement between conflicting opinions
Seems no dispute between either party as far as the corporate agenda goes. I think they mean
2.tr. Bring into disrepute or danger esp. by indiscretion…
Plenty of disrepute not much dispute between ‘conflicting opinions’ ours being irrelevant.
Though, I’ll remain somewhere between jaded cynicism and paranoidly-cautious optimism, ’cause this ain’t my first rodeo.
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I am so surprised and so pleased that you would front page my essay. I don’t know what to say except thanks for the compliment. Coming from you, it means a lot. I also cross posted this comment in your last diary because I really want you to know that I saw what you did and am truly flattered by it. mcjoan and Digby better watch out now. 🙂