And make no mistake - voting "no" on this health bill is the same as voting Republican. Is the legislation perfect? Far from it. Is a real public option vastly superior to what is being offered here? Damn straight. Should the bill pass anyway? It's an absolute no-brainer. The idea that anyone on the progressive side of the fence would punish 30 million currently uninsured Americans, and those with pre-existing conditions, and those who need preventative care, and those whose premiums are sky high, and on and on, by peevishly voting against a bill that, whatever else it is, is better than the status quo is unimaginable to me.
Take Dennis Kucinich (please!). Kucinich, supposedly a liberal champion of The People, doesn't seem to want to genuinely accomplish anything, preferring moral victories to actual ones. He has an opportunity to help enact historic legislation the likes of which no other Congress or Administration has managed to pull off, extending health insurance coverage to most Americans while curbing the industry's most abusive practices. And he's apparently willing to walk away from it because it's not nearly as good as can be. Kucinich knows better than almost anyone that getting something major done in Congress is nearly impossible, never mind major and ideal. That he would vote to kill this bill even though it does a laundry list of demonstrable good, knowing full well it was a pitched and bloody battle even to get this much, is hard to fathom.
Dennis wants to take his bat and ball and go home, not accepting, like a grown up, that politics is compromise and that as a congressman he is uniquely positioned to continue the fight to strengthen the legislation in the future. Since its inception, the Social Security Act, for example, has been amended many times; there is no reason to believe that it won't be the same with health care. Yet Kucinich and his ilk seem more than happy to see health reform fail, no matter that if it does, nobody will take it up again for a generation.
That is precisely what Republicans in Congress are counting on and Kucinich is poised to hand them this victory, gift wrapped, because he's disappointed that the bill doesn't go far enough. It is wildly irresponsible and enormously destructive.
Right now the current system is the starting point for any argument and hold-out Dems are tilting at windmills. So why not have Obamacare be the new starting point and continue with the tilting? As long as you're going to lose, why not mitigate your losses and get what you can get first? The only logical answer is that Kucinich just likes being a martyr to lost causes, and doesn't want to have to give up his self-righteous posturing on this issue. But passing this bill and continuing to fight for a public option - or even single payer - are not mutually exclusive.
Whether or not to accept compromise and incrementalism in legislation is, of course, an age old argument. In fact, it dates back at least to the Constitutional Convention of 1787. I would remind Rep. Kucinich and his apologists that there were many delegates in Philadelphia who didn't think the U.S. Constitution went "far enough". There were all sorts of competing plans, and even controversies and eventual compromises over hot-button issues like slavery (see "abortion", 2010). Some delegates were, of course, ready to walk away and several of them only voted for it when promised that a Bill of Rights would immediately follow. Sound familiar? It is not unlike the promise the House has extracted from the Senate to immediately pass fixes to the current health bill via reconciliation. Regardless, fixes to the Constitution didn't stop at its adoption. Subsequent to the original 10 amendments, there have been 17 more, the most recent one adopted in 1992.
Must we honestly pretend that every single one of the signers of our U.S. Constitution was 100% happy with the results on the day they signed it? I quote Benjamin Franklin, who said:
"There are several parts of this Constitution which I do not at present approve, but I am not sure I shall ever approve them. I doubt, too, whether any other Convention we can obtain may be able to make a better Constitution".Exactly. And so he signed it. Because he was mature, a statesman, a pragmatist... he battled for what he wanted, but settled for the best that he could get and he wasn't willing to make the perfect the enemy of the good.
When it comes to health insurance reform, Franklin's words should be Kucinich's, merely replacing the word "Constitution" with "legislation" and Convention with "Congress". Because no other Congress is going to net us a stronger initial bill, not next year, not a decade from now, and Kucinich knows it. Does he think opposition to the public option is simply going to vanish overnight and that the next President who tries health reform will pass it with ease? Is he not at all a student of history?
So who do you want to be, Mr. Kucinich? Franklin, Jefferson, Hamilton? Or a guy like Elbridge Gerry, who walked away from signing the U.S. Constitution... simply because there was not yet a Bill of Rights? A Bill of Rights, by the way, which, as promised, strengthened that flawed Constitution... a mere four years later.
Gerry's objection may have been well intentioned, but his refusal to see the Big Picture proved to be misguided; Franklin, meanwhile, did the right thing. This is obvious, of course, in hindsight. Unfortunately, what we're asking for from Kucinich is far tougher... it's called foresight. Luckily for him, we have history as our guide.
