Sixty Three Percent. What does that represent? The most recent poll numbers on how many Americans would agree to pay higher taxes for better health care.
The telephone survey of 3,003 U.S. adults conducted by Thomson Reuters found 63 percent willing to pay for healthcare reform, though most also said they are happy with their own doctors, insurance plans and out-of-pocket costs.
Ok, that’s the good news. The republicans and Glenn Beck’s teabaggers are the minority by a 2 to 1 margin. The bad news? After Democrats spent the last eight months screwing around seeking “bi-partisanship” from the Party of Just Say No (as well as letting them control the talking points aired by major media outlets), and playing footsie with Insurance industry lobbyists hell bent on killing the public option, an almost identical majority of Americans don’t think that President Obama and Congress will finish the job that we elected them to do: Give us real, meaningful health care reform.
However, only 35 percent of those surveyed said President Barack Obama’s reform agenda and the debate in Congress will lead to better health service, while 41 percent said they would expect it to lead to lower costs.
Of course, if there were any rationality in this debate, we would be arguing about a single payer system versus a public option competing with private insurance. Instead we’re seeing time after time, the insurance industry losing the PR battle with the American public, but winning the only battle that matters: with Democrats in Congress, and particularly Democrats in the Senate. Unlike the unity and discipline the Republican party demonstrated in passing almost anything that George Bush or Tom DeLay wanted, the Democrats, as a party (I’m not talking about the Progressive Caucus here for whom I have the greatest respect) have shown themselves time and again to be willing to go against what the majority of Americans clearly want: cheaper, better health care that doesn’t cut off your coverage anytime it looks like you’ll really need it, that covers pre-existing conditions, that doesn’t have “donut holes” and high deductibles, that doesn’t waste more money on administrative costs than any other country in the developed world, that covers anyone and everyone, that pays for our prescriptions and doesn’t allow the Pharmaceutical companies to gouge us, that’s portable and not tied to the current job we have, and that doesn’t reward the CEO’s of major for profit Insurance companies for denying coverage to as many people as they can, legally or otherwise.
This poll is just further evidence that Democrats are throwing away their chance to lock down a generational shift in the political landscape by playing business as usual with lobbyists and the Washington Establishment (admittedly, often one and the same) and settling for the “status quo” rather than implementing the most fundamental promises that got so many of them elected in the first place. Millions of people didn’t urn out to vote for more of the same just with a kinder, gentler face on it in November 2008. They turned out to elect the party which claimed it stood for change, and especially change in critical areas that affect our lives, such as health care. If the Democrats pass a crappy health care reform bill that merely moves the deck chairs around on the Titanic but reforms nothing with respect to the way health care is delivered and paid for in this country they will have failed. Failed as a party, and failed as servants of “We, the People.” And for that failure they will get hammered in the 2010 midterms. If that happens, no agenda of change dealing with the severe crises we face regarding our economy, climate change, needed government regulation of the financial sector nor health care reform that actually helps people rather than pad the pockets of Big Pharma and the Insurance Companies wiil be possible. Indeed, the likelihood that Obama will be a one term President (or a two termer like Bill Clinton whose grand accomplishments were eliminating welfare, destroying the last of the New Deal protections with respect to our financial industry, and avoiding trumped up charges of impeachment) will also increase dramatically.
The Democrats have been a party without any real power for the last three decades because they lost their way. Too many of them came to stand for nothing other than grubbing after corporate cash to pay for their campaigns (yes, Democratic leadership Council and “Blue Dogs” I’m talking to you). They became the party who ran Joe Lieberman as their Vice presidential candidate, who mouthed platitudes about “feeling our pain” while turning around and holding out their hands for any crumbs corporate lobbyists were willing to give them after most of the cash ahd already been turned over to the GOP’s candidates, the craziest, most malign group of politicians this side of Orwell’s 1984. They were swept back into power on a wave of resentment at what republicans had done when they controlled all the reins of government, true, but also because they claimed they had learned their lesson, and that they would change the culture in Washington, that they would put the people’s business before the interests of Big Business.
Well so far, dear Democrats, I’m not seeing any real return on that investment I made in your party when I pulled that lever for Barack Obama, and every other Democrat on my ballot last Fall. And there are a helluva lot of people who feel just like me. You think we are going to keep making all those small (but numerous) donations to you if you don’t come through for us? Sorry, but no. Pass health care reform that means something or you will find your party back in the political waste land from which you so recently emerged, and will have given new life to your opponent, the crazy loons of the Far Right GOP, who less than a year ago looked like their party was doomed to irrelevance for at least a generation.
In short, Dems, read the damn polls. Stop listening to Fox News and its cadre of wannabe haters on talk radio. Stop listening to the sweet whispers of corporate lobbyists who tell you the only way to retain your power is to play ball with them and go back on your word. Show some spine, demonstrate you have those vaunted principles you claim you do, and give the American people (not the Billionaires and CEOs with their bonuses and golden parachutes) something we can believe in, something that benefits the vast majority of ordinary citizens, not the wealthy elites.
Stand and deliver. Now, when it counts. Or be ready to pay the consequences. For we won’t turn out for you with our money, our activism or our votes a year from now if this is all you have to offer us. And that’s not a promise brothers and sisters, that’s a threat.
