I’m all for spreading credit around for the recent health care reform bill signed into law yesterday. Let the ultra macho Rahm Emanuel hijack as much of it as he likes. Let Obama claim that he did it for Teddy. Presidents invariably get the most credit for major legislative accomplishments.
However, truth be told, the one person who deserved the vast bulk of the credit that health care reform of any kind was passed, and who gives us the best chance of future changes to improve those reforms will be implemented is our nation’s first female Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi.
When nearly everyone else in the Senior Democratic leadership (i.e, the males for the most part, including Obama, Rahm, Reid, Hoyer, etc.) were wavering and back-tracking in the face of the relentless opposition by Republicans and right wing talk show hosts, the disinformation about reform spread by industry lobbyists and our gutless so-caled liberal news media, the ham handed intimidation tactics of the “Tea Party” town hall protests and the opposition of faithless Blue Dog Democrats, it was “the woman” who held fast and kept pushing for reform.
She kept working hard for us even when many had given comprehensive HRC up for dead when the man who would sell his daughters, Republican Scott Brown defeated Martha Coakley, the grossly incompetent Democratic nominee for Kennedy’s old seat, stealing away the Democrats filibuster proof Senate majority:
The day after Brown’s victory, in an interview with ABC News, Obama appeared to signal that he planned to pursue a scaled-back form of health care reform: “To coalesce around those elements in the package that people agree on,” as he put it. In the following days, it became clear that this was the strategy being pushed by Emanuel. In fact, from the very beginning, Emanuel had advised the president to pursue more modest goals – doubtless burned by his experience as a White House staffer when the Clinton administration suffered the catastrophic defeat of its healthcare overhaul in the 1990s. Overridden by Obama, Emanuel had been a good soldier and fought aggressively for the president’s policy. But now that it had hit the rocks, he advised him to settle for reining in the most egregious insurance company abuses and expanding coverage for low-income families. In the Senate, majority leader Harry Reid also appeared to favour putting healthcare on the backburner.<p.
The one Democratic leader who never publicly wavered from comprehensive reform was Pelosi, who derisively referred to Emanuel's downgraded proposal as “Kiddie Care”. Members of her own caucus entreated her to think small, but she made it clear she would opt for nothing less than a sweeping change to the healthcare system. “My biggest fight has been between those who wanted to do something incremental and those who wanted to do something comprehensive,” she later told reporters.
Obama, too, eventually chose the comprehensive path. […] But it was Pelosi who had to do the heaviest lifting – by convincing her members to vote for the Senate bill, which they didn’t much like, and by ensuring that the Senate would approve a package of fixes to its legislation that made it passably palatable to her caucus. In her way stood a series of obstacles that would give most normal people a migraine so intractable that insurance companies would deem it a pre-existing condition. There was Bart Stupak and his faction of anti-abortion Democrats. There was the equally large bloc of pro-choice lawmakers who threatened to revolt if Stupak’s demands for restrictions on insurance coverage of abortions prevailed. There were the unions, livid at the idea that the House might entrench the Senate’s tax on high-cost health plans. There was Dennis Kucinich. Each week seemed to bring an explanation of some obscure parliamentary manoeuvre that had been proposed and proved impossible.
Throughout it all, Pelosi remained adamant that healthcare reform would pass. […] Even when it was not at all clear that she had the support she needed to pass the bill in the House, she declared, “we will go through the gate. If the gate is closed, we will go over the fence. If the fence is too high, we will pole vault in. If that doesn’t work, we will parachute in. But we are going to get healthcare reform passed for the American people for their own personal health and economic security and for the important role that it will play in reducing the deficit.” And in the end, she brought her caucus with her – a feat that, despite the lack of media recognition so far, makes her one of the most canny and effective congressional leaders Democrats have seen in decades.
I’m not crazy about what happened to the public option when it got kicked to the curb, but I recognize that we got the best deal we could and one that a few weeks ago looked far worse than it does now. For that we have primarily one person to thank. Sure it happened on Obama’s watch. Yes, Alan Grayson was a big boost for progressive morale at a time we all felt the Democrats were going to whimper like whipped little puppies at the big bad meanie Republican attacks and screw the health care pooch like they did back in 1993 under Clinton. And yes, Howard Dean was a stalwart leader for the cause.
But make no mistake: this was Nancy Pelosi’s triumph. She’s been demonized by the right, lied about and smeared by falsehoods and ridiculed in the most misogynistic manner by Republican politicians. She’s been called the worst things one can say on the air by the Great Right Wing Wurlitzer. Glenn Beck “joked” about poisoning her. Rush Limbaugh called her a terrorist for her efforts to pass health care reform. Fox News host Laura Ingraham said of Pelosi work to pass HCR: “Nancy Pelosi basically did everything except sell her own body…”
Every other tinhorn wannabe hate talker got their shots in too, and far more vile names and inflammatory accusations about her were posted on right wing blogs, shouted at Tea Party gatherings and circulated in>vicious and libelous chain emails. Hell, Tea party enthusiasts bought T-shirts with her picture on them with the words “Criminal” and “Whore” on them just to make sure you knew what they mean by the word “civility.”
And let’s not forget Politico’s contribution which included some of the basest cheap shots against any politician I’ve ever read:
Pelosi is inarguably one of the strongest speakers in modern history — an authoritarian figure in an era of centralized power in the House. […]
Pelosi “will put a bullet in the head of anyone she needs to,” said a Democratic insider.
Yes, that’s right. Politico quoted anonymous sources to spread the word that Pelosi is a the equivalent of a Dictator and a Mob Boss like Tony Soprano who kills people execution style. Maybe some people just don’t appreciate the first effective Speaker of the House we’ve had in half a century. I think it was the media who were gunning for her to fail frankly.
But of all the Democrats, she stayed the course. They all tried to play “chicken” with her, tried to force her off her path, but in the end it was the GOP and their hate filled Tea Party creation that crashed and burned.
So thank you, Speaker Pelosi. You’re one Democrat I know doesn’t have to be reminded that you work for “we the people” because you do it willingly 24/7 every single day in the face of pressure I can’t imagine. I wish we had a lot more like you.
