It’s time that people took off the rose colored glasses and faced the fact that Obama’s “leadership” on health care was empty and passive. He went for the corporate-friendly “win” that enriches the insurance and drug companies, just as he has enriched the banks and failed to hold them to account. Those who look first to others as scapegoats for his actions have apparently not come to grips with the fact that as President of the United States, he’s a very powerful man who is not using that power to advance the progressive agenda they attribute to him.
Best part of the "passive" complaint is that Hamsher states a few graphs earlier that Obama has been "intimately involved in the process of crafting the health care bill." So, uh, apparently he's passively orchestrating the whole thing.
Anyway, I find it odd that someone positioned as a steely-eyed realist is continually let down by candidates once they get into office. I get that Hamsher has her shtick: a) get Democrats elected and b) get better Democrats elected. But we're getting close to poisoning the well here. From the outset this entire process has been an elaborate dance to figure out how to pay for reform without significantly cutting into the profits of private industries. Yet people who know this continually act betrayed every time a Blue Dog member of Congress leg humps an industry talking point. I guess its what you have to do to rile up the troops. But count me out. I'm fine with a reform package that covers everyone while laying the groundwork for expanding cheaper insurance in the future. (Lowering the Medicare age is an obvious Trojan Horse on that front, which is why it's probably not happening.)
Like it or not, politics is the art of the possible. And Obama is on the cusp of accomplishing what was previous not possible. Liberals screaming reform should be done in one fell swoop and that anything short of Obama and Emanuel throwing on war paint and charging up Capitol Hill on a suicide run need to dial it down. We elect presidents, not kings.
