What dday said. The Democratic base is focused, I think, on near term survival issues. Like having a job and living in a house. Or apartment. Or at least not under a bridge. The ‘public option’ is pretty hard for people to get their minds around, especially when they think it’s off the table. Also, too, a not insignificant slice of the Democratic base are no longer qualified to vote, due to Republican suppress-the-vote measures. That has to be incredibly demoralizing for people who have been conscientious voters all their lives.

I think the Democratic base is dead, having been beaten to death by the Democratic Party.

“Hey, liberals! You want a public option on health insurance? Make it a mandatory position for Democrats running for Congress, and sooner or later the Dems will have a good year and they’ll pass it. Or, if you forget about it now, odds are it will never be passed.”

Try making these demands on the democrats. They virtually always take the straw man argument that anybody who talks about single payer health care or public options wants everything perfect, will be the death of the democratic party, and will usher in an age where Newt Gingrich will force the poor and middle class into slave labor. They maintain that while these advocates have the power to destroy the democratic party, they have no power to make these positive changes to American health care. And eventually, a lot of people sadly believe it.

I think the majority of rank and file democratic voters live in a gradually darkening gray twilight — the same kind that Theodore Roosevelt warned against. They’d rather support an increasingly blatant corporatist democratic party out of fear of what the republicans will do.

As for the public option fight to the states, I think it’s admirable that the fight for true health care is alive, but these fights ultimately can’t win unless we already had the Kucinich Amendment on our sides, so the health insurance industry wouldn’t be able to sue states like Vermont via ERISA. True, nobody’s talking about the public option — nobody’s even talking about the Kucinich Amendment, or anything similar — the right for states to have their own single payer healthcare system or a “public option”.

I’ve heard some democratic loyalists say states like Vermont will fight the insurance industry in court until the bitter end. Sorry, I just don’t see that happening. And even with all the resolve in the world, it will likely ultimately go to the US Supreme Court, which always votes corporatist. I’m sure they’ll even vote yes on the individual mandate, contrary to ignorant rank-and-file republican overconfidence of a no vote, and equally ignorant rank-and-file democrat fears that a corporatist US Supreme Court will say no to tens of millions of new customers’ worth of feel-good, subsidized corporate welfare.

I think the only things that will bring us single payer or a public option are either (a) the abandonment of the two major parties (b) the secession of states like Vermont (“us” if we end up living in these seceded states), or (c) public outcry forcing the democrats and other established politicians to enact single payer healthcare and other essential safety nets out of fear of losing their power and prestige (I find C to be the least likely).

Those not hopelessly alienated by the entire political process …

are completely divorced from reality. Obama’s health care fixer (sic)
is running his reelection campaign.

Let us no forget drug re-importation and direct drug price negotiation in Medicare Part D. Progressive made that a must for Democrats running in 2006-2008 and once elected Obama betrayed his base and his promises to cut a deal with drug companies.

I think that Obama and the Democrats fundamentally misunderstood and misread the HCR debate and the Public Option issue. They saw it as just another “issue”; we (the rank and file) saw it as a defining moment, South Carolina’s firing on Fort Sumpter, the civil rights murders in Mississippi and Alabama, etc. They failed to realize how widely and deeply the entire base was energized, and what we expected.

Nothing has ever revealed the corruption and cowardice of the Dem party like the Public Option fiasco. It pulled the curtain back, for good. Things will never be the same. Never.

I don’t think “liberals” have forgotten about the mythical “public option” per se. I think a lot of people have never lived in a country with a publicly-paid health care system and so have no idea that the status quo would not entail having to deal with a private insurance parasite instead. These people will not demand on an ongoing basis what seems to most of us a mythical foreign system that we’ve had no contact with. The political leadership in the country, which knows better, needs to keep the argument alive.

The “liberals” that have not ceased ongoing demand for the mythical “public option” have instead become so colossally cynical after decades of Democratic and Republican party bullshit, culminating in Barack Obama campaigning on “change we can believe in” and then governing with moderate Republican status quo policies and politics, that we’ve ceased to have hope. We’ve watched the Congress all but reduce itself to a banana republic level of governance and we’ve seen national economic calamity met with policies that favor plutocrat capitalists and bankers. The American political class no longer has any credibility with us so we aren’t loudly demanding a publicly-funded health care system because we don’t believe the American political class could successfully organize a community picnic for Lockjaw, Kentucky, let alone manage entire critical national systems we rely on.

Democratic base be damned, we aren’t going to get a public option because the Vichycrats have been handsomely bribed to not even discuss the possibility. This is much more about the politicians and their patrons than it is about any and all voters.

Agree and well said. What will OWS base look like in future elections? I am hopeful during the next big downturn our Arab Spring turns into a new party that has it’s base in majority rules populist pragmatic fairness with the Constitution and rule of law as it’s guide. Like Adams and Jefferson et al envisioned it.

” … I think the Democratic base is dead, having been beaten to death by the Democratic Party.”

They certainly don’t seem to actually WANT to represent any of their voters, do they?

And his reelection campaign will run against the reelection campaign of they guy who he stole his health care “reform” from.

the Democratic base is dead, having been beaten to death by the Democratic Party.

Perfect. Brilliant in its accuracy and simplicity.

They deserve to have their asses handed to them on a platter.

I think the next step should be a single form, nationally, for filing all insurance claims. From Medicare to Medicaid and all private insurance providers. This would save billions annually now and would educate the public to the ease of simplicity in one step billing. On MLK, Jr. Day I am struck by how far the Dems have fallen on progressive issues. We are counted on to get out the vote, volunteer, send in donations, etc and then sent to the basement and locked up. Issues such as the living wage, marriage equality, ending the war on drugs, health care and election reform by a honest Justice Dept. should excite every citizen not making 100K a year. That it doesn’t is absolutely frightening and sickening simultaneously.

1. Gruber is involved in the VT plan. I await the hidden pitfalls from that association.

2. The only way a PO would be useful is if the govt negotiates lower reimbursements to providers. That is of limited use for states or locals since providers can exit those locations. USG will NOT do that (PhRMA legislation is ultimate example), and I expect MC & MC payments to increase in the hopes of bankrupting those programs, serving as an excuse for eliminating them altogether.

Having served my function as spoiler, I do agree that single payer is a possible political motivator for 99ers.

Couldn’t agree more. The democratic party bigwigs have been mis-reading both the party members (if you can call them that) and the general public, especially the “independents” for quite some time. One only needs to have witnessed the fiasco that was their “mandate” from 2008 being squandered and otherwise damaged beyond repair by Obama’s broken promises.

I saw Harry Reid on MTP Sunday. What a DWEEB! The democratic party needs some people with cajones. and they are sadly lacking that at the moment.

Eve Gittelson gave a nice roundup on healthcare and the Occupy Group at Virtually Speaking Blog Talk Radio:

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/virtuallyspeaking/2011/12/30/eve-gittelson-virtually-speaking-with-jay-ackroyd

fyi

While learning lessons from the “public option” campaign, perhaps one should consider the problem that “public option” meant no fixed thing — no definition of who would be covered under what terms… let alone the problem that, if the politics were so corrupted that proven solutions like single-payer and nationalized healthcare were taboo even to discuss*, how “public option” would be allowed to be meaningfully competitive against for-profit insurance.

There’s yet to be any accounting for how the vaporous “public option” (rather than Medicare for All) became the sine qua non for progressive advocacy, even though it was a complete cipher. “We” fought for a nothingburger and lost.
___

* A situation which barely anyone on the big blogs fought back against, as “public option” mania ruled the day.

The man asked for our votes in those fine speeches, and promised to make everything right. And we responded – 60 in the Senate caucus, that huge House majority. All they had to do was show up in Washington, propose, pass, and sign. We’d have New Deal, Great Society rolled together and renewed for another generation. There was the war, the economic crisis, yes; but Health Care was the everpresent issue. We didn’t vote for bipartisanship and compromise, we voted for public financing. Single-payer never even appeared on the table. Then we watched him hand an ax to every Republican and every dinosaur Democrat to take whack away, during months of wasted time. And even after that there were rumors of a public option maybe resurrected as an amendment to the mess that was approaching the floor. So he sent his chief henchman Lieberman to cross the aisle and filibuster with the Republicans, promising no public option, no drug reimportation, no Medicare drug price negotiation. He had to work so hard to deny us the health care public financing he had campaigned on and we had voted for. And tthen he will still after all that stand up and say “I support the public option, we just didn’t have the votes.” Never again.

True, it was a compromise of a compromise of a compromise on single payer. And even the public option was further compromised to opt-in, or opt-out, and still wasn’t allowed a vote. That we were fighting over a fig leaf in the end, and lost, made the Democrats’ betrayal and our failure more galling than anything.

Yup. The battle has moved to the States. Single payer, marijuana prohibition, marriage equality – are hopeless causes in Washington. The trouble is the powers reserved to the States in the constitution are no longer reserved to the States. So where will progressives stand on issues of nullification and secession?

Nice analysis. I agree that the public option was the straw that broke the camel’s back for many, including me.

P.O. was a hoax from the very beginning fabricated by Obama,Pelosi and Emmanuel, they also killed the P.O. from the very,very beginning,Obama never had any true and genuine intention whatsoever in including some decent P.O.,single payer or universal insurance in the Unaffordable Health Act.
If the same people who financed Obama’s campaign and his seat in WH is the same people who opposed anything like P.O(Big Pharma,Insurers etc),what would you expect to happen?.Instead,the Unaffordable and watered down Health Care Act included a despicable mandate without any protection for consumers.
P.O.,single payer etc are dead and buried,there is no hope for these options coming from no guts democrats nor republicans,that’s why i would like to see the Romneys,Pauls etc repelling the despicable mandate if they win nov/2012.

Barack The Betrayer conducted that WH dog and pony “big table meeting/find a chair and “join in” about/over American “healthcare problems and solutions early on after Jan.20,2009. Obama soon short circuited any goodwill coming out of that staged WH “event” and we now know Barack The Betrayer was likely the AHIP/PhARMA/allied “keep the status quo intact” American healthcare horse in the race all along. Barack The Betrayer sabotaged Medicare For All and as others above have once again laid it out made sure AHIP/and its allies got and held the most “chairs” until ACA was done and inked.

Barack Obama should be voted out of the WH over how this all came about if no one is going to go after Obama for being a warmonger/warcriminal abettor and being the same himself or for his rotted Wall St./Big Banks sellouts and coverups/slow walks/no walks on jailing any of those crookeds.

Plain to see Medicare For All was a very valid and demonstrably sellable idea politically that was derailed by a D Party run WH and Congress.

Someone should be punished for giving us ACA and Barack The Betrayer seems a very good choice for political punishment for the 2009/2010 AHC debacle.

Vote Barack The Betrayer out of the WH in November 2012. Take the WH away from Obama. Then prosecute him for being a warcriminal abettor and one as well. Real men don’t go to Tehran. They take down the American WarCriminals.

As tho the the past stale and fully rotted premise of the D vs. R flimflam could even begin that journey.

Punishing Barack Obama is a very valid political goal at this point. Vote Barack The Betrayer out of the WH in November 2012. Do America a big favor.

Who will follow Obama? Very likely someone little better or worse than Obama if the D/R Duopoly has any fingerprints on it. Count on it. They will and do.

Best comment.

The public option was nothing but a head fake designed to get “the left” to support a crap “health care” bill, and I can’t believe at this late date that there are still those on the putative left pushing it. Talk single payer – not public option.

While learning lessons from the “public option” campaign, perhaps one should consider the problem that “public option” meant no fixed thing

You’ve got that right. Back then HealthcareNow (steadfast single-payer advocates) didn’t have much of an organizational structure and MoveOn meekly accepted the constantly moving target presented to them by the Administration. But HealthcareNow has grown stronger and kept its focus – lame as the whole public option campaign was, something positive emerged alongside it.

Hey shoot ,I hope you aren’t proposing we vote for a pub to get rid of Obama .I can’t even comprehend the degree of cowardice it would it take to be a lesser-evil pansy who votes for Obama ,but if you hate O enough to vote for his political demise ,maybe you have a problem that runs deeper than politics .Ideally ,you would evolve beyond the two-party racket and help us build a movement/party capable of wielding spoiler leverage .

It makes no sense to institutionalize as a platform issue a position that every true progressive recognized as a weak compromise from the very beginning.

I think it is also a mistake to equate in any way the “progressive movement” with the Obama, Reid, Pelosi led Democratic party. There is no progressive ideal that these people are not willing to compromise away in search of some mythical “big deal” that moves the country and the party to the right.

You can review/read my FDL comments defogger anytime — I did not just show up at FDL last month.

I am not proposing anyone vote for anything or anyone without doing the homework first. I do think it is plainly evident American voters neeed better,more competent,less corruptible/corrupt politicians and political parties.

Who said anything about hate? You did—not me.

But do get on with your “building” — I wish you and whoever the “us” is in your comment the best.

“Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can’t ride you unless your back is bent.”

Martin Luther King, Jr.

No, don’t you guys listen to Thom Hartman and whoever it was that did the Young Turk’s show on Friday. We have to hold our noses and vote for Obama because the Republicans might vote conservative justices to the Supreme Court.

Lol!

Umm, looking who we got from Obama so far, I am not exactly optimistic that we’d get our liberal justices. They’d go for what is just politically expedient and that’d be that.

Thom and whoever it was can kiss my ass. They have too much faith in the system and/or Obama. Give me a break, why would they ever believe that he’d right the ship, why? Why do they think the Republicans can do so much worse?

Are you trying to force medical profession into the 99%? Do you realize how much money they are throwing at the politicians not to have the public option? This is not happening any time soon, not unless politicians can be separated from money.

~But more to the point, the public option debate will be seen in future years as a seminal event in progressive politics, one which fundamentally transformed the tactics and strategies of whatever is left of a progressive movement.~

Sorry, this is total bullshit. “The Public Option” was taken on as a variable phrase, one which progressives used to “make believe” whatever they wanted to believe. A “seminal moment in progressive politics”???

The only seminal moment was that so-called progressives “caved”.

Jane jumped into the debate w/o having done her homework. That was an eye-opener. She took on the talking points of the right, and trusted her sources, such as they were. Like Jason Rosenbaum? Of “The Seminal”? Truly “Seminal”. Jane embraced him, but he was a shill, who could not say anything remotely compelling. Usually he said, “you have to read the bill”.

Hi Vastleft.

Yeah, the “public option” meant whatever one wished to think it meant. People who supported the so-called “public option” really don’t/ didn’t understand that the phrase meant, uh, whatever flavor of bullshit that was the “word” of the day.

Hey shoot ,you apparently don’t have the aptitude to distinguish between a hypothetical and an accusation .Good luck with your little punishment jihad against Obama .Have lots of time on your hands ,eh ?

Next election, I will be voting against every Dem i ever voted for. I will vote for anyone new and particularly anyone discussing public health.

Americans demanded a conversation about health care and we were slapped in the teeth. Obama, who was elected to help those living the health care nightmare, everyone know it, totally played us like a drunk prom queen. Wall street demanded that their health care model of sucking off of health care as a parasite be preserved and boy WAS IT.

I will never vote for Obama again. I am voting against all incumbents. All of them have served Wall street first and all of them have shown themselves to be total whores. Even if I just get new whores. I WILL send my message.

Dems are totally on board with Wall Street and playing Kabuki Theater with the villainous Repubs. Dems haven’t run anyone against Kathy Mcmorris for a decade. Literally, no one. It’s all about staging. Total OnePercent GArbage.

Soo sooo soooo done.

We don’t want no damned public option. We want universal, single payer health care like improved Medicare for all.

BeachPopulist,

In two short paragraphs you have summed up my experience perfectly. Before the Public Option I was a Democratic Party activist for 15 years in Ohio, Nevada and California. I believed Obama’s campaign promises: donated money, worked on his campaign and voted for him.

His killing of the Public Option was the ultimate and final betrayal and the end of my involvement with the Party. I am done. I changed my registration to Independent – Socialist. One of the saddest and one of the most profound days of my forty years.

I think Obama and the Democrats do not fully appreciate that they have lost a generation that might have backed them in the future. They are gambling that big money will offset the numbers of activists they have lost. I think in the end they will lose the gamble. Things have simply become too bad for that to wash.

Again, well said.

Right there with you as no doubt many more are.

The problem was that the single-payer advocates were not organized and had no pull within either Congress or the administration (no, not even with Hillary):

…as Jane explained a number of times, most notably back in September of last year, the congressional backing for single payer was nonexistent — a number of Congresscritters claimed to be SP fans but ran away from it the first chance they got. On the other hand, it took several months of severe battering from Rahm and Company before the core PO folks folded.
As Jane noted last fall:

At least 16 or 17 junior staffers on the Hill will swear that there are enough votes in the House to pass single payer. (Don’t read too much into the fact that H.R. 676 cosponsors are heading for the hills and won’t support it now that it might actually come to the floor for a vote. Three words: Nancy Pelosi, nunchucks.)
It would’ve been just as easy to launch a ball-busting campaign for something that neither the President nor a majority of Democrats in Congress support. And the insurance companies? It’s not like they would’ve fought any harder against a bill that turned them into a smoking hole than they did against one that shoveled a trillion dollars into their coffers over the next decade.

What we lost in the form of — well, a hundred and forty Democrats who won’t publicly admit they support single payer and a President who won’t sign it into law we’d more than make up for in a really excited base who would have been willing to turn out en masse in the service of a morally superior message. Because god knows, that always works.

So Jane was being politically expedient, like umm, well, nevermind. Did Jane receive any funding from any organization to push/support the public option?

Anywho – wouldn’t it have been better to support an idea that actually works than to vehemently support a head fake that was designed to sucker/split the left on the issue?