Whip Appeal
by digby
Mike Lux asks the Dems a most important question: do they want to be political failures or not?
The internal debate on health care strategy for Democrats can be boiled down to this: do we choose the approach whose specifics are more popular with the public and will almost certainly work better in practice once it gets passed, or do we want to go with something that has some bipartisan support and may avoid an all out war with the insurance industry?
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The first thing to understand in all this is the consequences for the Democrats for the next generation and probably longer if they pass some convoluted, complicated, unworkable compromise that doesn’t change the abusive patterns in the insurance and pharmaceutical industries and doesn’t begin to control health care costs. If they pass a compromise that doesn’t meet regular people’s needs, folks will figure it out very quickly, as most people deal with the health care system all the time. If the Democrats twist up this bill to make insurance companies and their Republican allies happy, it is end of story for this generation of Democrats — our party will not recover from screwing up health care.
Our system is designed to put the politicians’ base self interest, egos and insecurities to use to make them worry about losing their seats if they fail to deliver for their constituents. But the incentives are skewed, with many of them more concerned about their opportunities for personal wealth and protecting their fellow members of the ruling class (that last being part of the design as well.) So, Lux’s exhortation is not as straightforwardly logical as it first sounds.
Still, they should care about power if nothing else. That’s universal. And the idea of being out of power for a generation should scare them — it wasn’t long ago that they were living that nightmare. And I would very much doubt that being the instruments of the demise of the Democratic party will win them much favor among the insurance company titans in the long run. Masters of the Universe don’t like losers.
Lux winds up his post with this:
So face your fear, Max Baucus. Tell you health industry allies no, Jim Cooper. Work through your fear of commitment, Evan Bayh and Ben Nelson and Blanche Lincoln and Mary Landrieu. Let’s put together a bill that actually works and move forward sometime soon, in our lifetimes preferably. It’s time to get this done.
Some of us feel that these people need some extra nudging and the PCCC is asking for your vote on who next to send a message to:
In the last 72 hours, two senators named in our TV ad — Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) and Kay Hagan (D-NC) — announced support for the public option!
The big lesson? Pressure works. TV ads work. Now it’s our job to keep the momentum high. So we’ll be running versions of our hard-hitting ad in targeted states — pressuring individual Senate Democrats back home where it hurts most. We just need you to help us decide where.
Click here to cast your vote! On the voting page, you’ll see profiles of eight senators — including how much money they’ve taken from the health and insurance interests, whether they sit on important committees, and their statements on the public option. Each version of the ad will feature the names of a senator’s local constituents who “signed” our ad — representing the 76% of Americans who demand a public option. It will also display the senator’s big contributors. We know that these ads are working. Not only have our ads been featured in the New York Times and Washington Post (which said we’re rattling Democratic senators), but MoveOn and Blue America have been running ads in Sen. Hagan and Sen. Lincoln’s home states. And the result? They are coming around. Two down, eight to go.
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