But the Republican nominee for governor of Virginia would love to have access to your bedroom:
The Washington Post digs up a master's thesis written by Virginia gubernatorial candidate Robert McDonnell (R) in which he described working women and feminists as "detrimental" to the family.
McDonnell also said government policy should favor married couples over "cohabitators, homosexuals or fornicators." And he described as "illogical" a 1972 Supreme Court decision legalizing the use of contraception by unmarried couples.
"The 93-page document, which is publicly available at the Regent University library, culminates with a 15-point action plan that McDonnell said the Republican Party should follow to protect American families -- a vision that he started to put into action soon after he was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates."
So the fear is not of a welfare state but of changes in their welfare state. The result is that the coalition against reform is an odd union between people opposing government-run health care and people defending government-run health care. It's a potent combination.
Incoherence is the thread that binds the Republican argument. But that doesn't matter. People are hearing what they want to hear. By making the pitch about lowering costs, Obama thought he could avoid the mistake that doomed Clinton. In 1993, Hillary and Bill focused their pitch on insuring everyone. But the middle class didn't care. People feared change would come at their expense. Sixteen years later the song remains the same -- even if the lyrics are different. Obama has tried to focus on cost cutting, but his pitch has been undone by fears of rationing (and a lack of messaging from the Democrats as a whole; the branding has been non-existent).
I'm afraid this debate shows we're still a center-right country, even if the party of the right is in complete disarray. The GOP isn't winning the rhetoric war because of Michael Steele's deft touch and Newt Gingrich's insight. No, a strong coalition of people in this country are suspicious of government. And they are suspicious of the unknown. They gave Obama a chance because they desired competence more than his actual agenda. For Obama, it's campaign season all over again.
Congress is on the cusp of passing sweeping progressive changes to the issue Ted Kennedy championed for nearly 50 years. The loss of his voice from the health care debate has been a cruel, sad irony. In its place we've been left to digest soundbites from Chuck Grassley ("pull the plug on grandma"), Mike Huckabee (under Obama's plan Kennedy would have been told to "go home to take pain pills and die") and ... Harry Reid. Should the Senate Majority Leader really be lumped in with a group of health care illiterate, Machiavellian Hillbillies? Sadly, yes. With Kennedy unable to champion the progressive argument for health care reform there's a void left that one might suppose an acknowledged leader would fill. That hasn't happened. Instead, Reid, a weak and ineffectual senator with an approval rating hovering around 30 percent in his home state, has been forced by local politics to sit out the most important political debate of Obama's young presidency. Finally, yesterday, Reid spoke up -- only to make it clear he intends to spend no political capital in arguing for stronger reforms:
During a tele-townhall with constituents today, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he supports a public option...but then he added an extremely important caveat. Reid said he doesn't think the public option ought to be a government run program like Medicare, but instead favors a "private entity that has direction from the federal government so people that don't fall within the parameters of being able to get insurance from their employers, they would have a place to go. "
This is insultingly stupid. The public option, by definition, would be a government run program. Instead, Reid is signaling support for a co-op, which nobody seems to know how would be run. Reid owes his perch in the senate largely to club rules: leadership is earned through tenure. Ideology matters little. So progressives are left with the health care debate being defined in the senate by an impotent leader and a Finance Committee chairman bought and paid for by the pharmaceutical industry. Four health care bills have been passed that have a public option. The fifth is being anchored down by Reid and Max Baucus. A couple weeks ago, Digby said this while wondering if losing some seats in the House was a political price worth paying to pass health care reform:
To hell with Rahm and his appease the Blue Dogs at all costs strategy. What good is it if the president fails in 2012?
Perhaps we should add another question: What good is a 60-40 senate majority when the leader is unable to lead?
What if health care is rationed as a result of Obama's health care plan? Well, uh, that's what we already do:
The very same survey also
looked at cost problems among residents of different countries: 24
percent of Americans reported that they did not get medical care
because of cost. Twenty-six percent said they didn't fill a
prescription. And 22 percent said they didn't get a test or treatment.
In Britain and Canada, only about 6 percent of respondents reported
that costs had limited their access to care.
The numbers are almost mirror images of each other. Twenty-seven
percent of Canadians wait more than four months for treatment, versus
only four percent of Americans. Twenty-four percent of Americans can't
afford medical care at all, versus only 6 percent of Canadians. And the
American numbers are understated because if you can't afford your first
appointment, you never learn you couldn't afford the medicine or test
that the doctor would have prescribed.
The images of rubes storming town halls to defend themselves against politicians trying to make health care cheaper and more accessible is stranger than fiction. The free market rations health care by making it too expensive for many Americans to afford. It ensures health care is a privilege in this country. But we don't focus on the devil we know. That's boring. The debate favors the special interests, not only because their pockets are deep and their shame non-existent. It favors pharmaceutical lobbyists and Dick Armey apologists because those who have something to lose know what that is. And those who have something to gain, don't know what that is. So our health care debate devolves to benefit the people willing to tell the best lie:
President Obama's approval rating has reached a new low in the Gallup daily tracking poll, with an even 50% approving of his performance as of yesterday, and 43% disapproving.
The WaPo's Steve Pearlstein has had a string of uncommonlygood columns recently on the health care debate and the latest doesn't disappoint. Today, Perlstein touched on Ted Kennedy's greatest legislative regret (well, besides having trusted George Bush to actually fund the No Child Left Behind Act): failing to compromise on health-care reform when Dick Nixon was ready to make a deal:
It was back in 1971 and President Nixon was concerned that he would once again have to face a Kennedy in the next year's election -- in this case a Kennedy with a proposal to extend health care to all Americans. Feeling the need to offer an alternative, Nixon asked Congress to require for the first time that all companies provide a health plan for their employees, with federal subsidies for low-income workers. Nixon was particularly intrigued by a new idea called health maintenance organizations, which held the promise of providing high-quality care at lower prices by relying on salaried physicians to manage and coordinate patient care.
At first, Kennedy rejected Nixon's proposal as nothing more than a bonanza for the insurance industry that would create a two-class system of health care in America. But after Nixon won reelection, Kennedy began a series of secret negotiations with the White House that almost led to a public agreement. In the end, Nixon backed out after receiving pressure from small-business owners and the American Medical Association. And Kennedy himself decided to back off after receiving heavy pressure from labor leaders, who urged him to hold out for a single-payer system once Democrats recaptured the White House in the wake of the Watergate scandal.
Thirty-five year later, the single-payer dream of Democratic liberals still remains politically out of reach.
And 35 years later, we have a deal in the works that looks strikingly similar to the one Kennedy and Nixon almost agreed to. Guarantee health care for all, add some insurance reform, subtract a public option and there it is. Of course, it also should be noted that the meandering rightward drift this country has found itself on since the days of Watergate break-ins and Neville Chamberlin-inspired trips to China is disorienting. Sure, Nixon might have been an unconscionable asshole who said of Ted Kennedy that "if he gets shot, it's too damn bad." But he also never found himself leading an incoherent and factually-deficient GOP revolt against reasonable reforms to the nation's health care system by posting op-eds on Facebook. Or talking about killing grandma. Fearmongering about health care is nothing new for the GOP. But today's Republican leadership would brand Nixon a damn socialist.
The point is this: I have no idea how this debate is going to play out. But when it comes to overhauling the most important social program this country has, "you make the best deal you can get, leaving it to subsequent generations to perfect." But before even that can happen Obama needs to define the debate. The country is done hearing from President Grassley.
Things
didn't exactly work out as intended. And so here I am; a bit older,
quite possibly none the wiser (and worse for wear). There's that old
expression -- something about laying things to rest that involve best
plans -- which I suppose is a not very illuminating way of explaining
my Pufferfish Sabbatical. The bottom line, is that instead of continuing to wank away at a big
blog with a big audience while posting under my real name, I'm
returning to this gig ... to wank away under a pseudonym.
With that, here's a little self-celebratory music, which begs the question: is blogging better than sex?
