Paul Krugman thinks Obama has generated a trust issue with progressives because of the way his administration has handled a number of issues important to us, especially the wishy-washy, back and forth crapola from the White House on on a public option for Health Care reform. And he thinks that it’s a good thing we’re mad as hell and not going to take it anymore:
A backlash in the progressive base — which pushed President Obama over the top in the Democratic primary and played a major role in his general election victory — has been building for months. The fight over the public option involves real policy substance, but it’s also a proxy for broader questions about the president’s priorities and overall approach.
The idea of letting individuals buy insurance from a government-run plan was introduced in 2007 by Jacob Hacker of Yale, was picked up by John Edwards during the Democratic primary, and became part of the original Obama health care plan. […]
On the issue of health care … the inspiring figure progressives thought they had elected comes across, far too often, as a dry technocrat who talks of “bending the curve” but has only recently begun to make the moral case for reform. Mr. Obama’s explanations of his plan have gotten clearer, but he still seems unable to settle on a simple, pithy formula; his speeches and op-eds still read as if they were written by a committee.
Krugman goes on to make the point that a publkic option saves money. Alternatives that have been floated like health care co-ops are in his words “a sham.” He points to the dramatic rise in stock prices for the major health insurers on the day that the “co-op plan” was announced as all the proof you need. After all, aren’t we always being told the market is never wrong? And in this case, it isn’t. Stock analysts might be biased and occasionally incredibly stupid (let’s not rehash the Tech bubble or the bubble in real estate that grossly inflated the value of financial firms now bankrupt or no longer in existence) , but even they can see that health care co-ops are far less of a threat to the profits of health insurance companies than a public option modeled after Medicare would be.
But unfortunately, Obama has made some of his biggest missteps on getting a viable health care bill. He’s alienated the progressive wing of the party, true, but even worse he’s allowed the rump Republican zanies (which are practically all the ones who are left in Congress) to control the message on health care reform. Their constant use of the Big Lie technique such as suggesting Obama will force Americans to accept “rationed health care” from the unfeeling government bureaucrats (utterly false, and ironic considering the “rationing” private insurers already have forced upon most of us with often fatal results), “death panels” that will decide whether old people will live or die (utterly false — again, that’s what the private companies are already doing under the radar) and that health care reform is just the first step by Democrats in establishing a tyrannical Big Brother Police State (a fantastically large lie if there ever was one) has now convinced millions of people, against their better interests to defending the right of insurance companies to screw them over.
Thus, we have witnessed the incredible sight of misguided and misinformed individuals who are supporting the right of major corporations not to have to face competition from a provider (the government) who has already shown it can administer health care (Medicare) cheaper than they can while covering everyone. Unlike health insurance companies, who need to deny coverage when it is most needed (i.e., when you get a life threatening medical condition, or when you have a pre-existing condition) and can cherry pick whom they cover and raise the rates for coverage anytime they want by any amount they want (just ask small business owners who have been priced out of health care coverage for their employees by many companies), Medicare takes all comers.
Yet Obama’s team has constantly botched the message that a public option creates more competition in a free market system. No one would be forced to accept the government plan, but when you’re private insurance company kicks you to the curb to maintain its profit margins, it will be there for you. How someone could screw up such a simple clear message of the benefits of the public option, play silly games with obstructionist Republican politicians over the phony need for bipartisanship, and allow people like Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachman, Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck to gin up the hate with their untruths and gross falsehoods is beyond me.
But that isn’t the only problem the Obama administration has with liberals and progressives, as Krugman notes:
(cont.)
Meanwhile, on such fraught questions as torture and indefinite detention, the president has dismayed progressives with his reluctance to challenge or change Bush administration policy.
And then there’s the matter of the banks.
I don’t know if administration officials realize just how much damage they’ve done themselves with their kid-gloves treatment of the financial industry, just how badly the spectacle of government supported institutions paying giant bonuses is playing. But I’ve had many conversations with people who voted for Mr. Obama, yet dismiss the stimulus as a total waste of money. When I press them, it turns out that they’re really angry about the bailouts rather than the stimulus — but that’s a distinction lost on most voters.
So there’s a growing sense among progressives that they have, as my colleague Frank Rich suggests, been punked.
For such a smart politician, he’s taken an awful lot of bad advice from the people who didn’t want him to be President in the first place. Furthermore, by alienating his own base, he’s lost a great deal of the good will and political capital he had when he entered office, without winning over any of the Republican votes he has so dearly sought. Nor has he gained any wave of new support from independents, who now have to wonder what exactly they voted for last year: change or more of the same?
I’ll let Krugman have the last word on Obama’s failures with progressives:
[T]here’s a point at which realism shades over into weakness, and progressives increasingly feel that the administration is on the wrong side of that line. It seems as if there is nothing Republicans can do that will draw an administration rebuke: Senator Charles E. Grassley feeds the death panel smear, warning that reform will “pull the plug on grandma,” and two days later the White House declares that it’s still committed to working with him.
It’s hard to avoid the sense that Mr. Obama has wasted months trying to appease people who can’t be appeased, and who take every concession as a sign that he can be rolled. […]
So progressives are now in revolt. Mr. Obama took their trust for granted, and in the process lost it. And now he needs to win it back.
