Urban Thought Collective

So, it looks like the pro-business, anti-Obama Republicans and the sell-out Blue Dog Democrats have effectively killed one of the most important components of healthcare reform. Despite the heroic the efforts of Democratic Senators Chuck Schumer and Jay Rockefeller, the Senate Finance Committee voted to keep a public health insurance option out of the bill it is preparing. This will pretty much guarantee that the masses of Americans who don’t get health coverage at work and can’t afford to buy it will continue to be out there on their own.

Maybe the public option was a lost cause all along? The Republicans have been against it from jump and the Blue Dogs have been stubborn in their opposition, despite being members of the President’s party. So, maybe there was never any real hope of getting a government-run healthcare alternative through the Congress. But maybe there was. One thing’s certain, President Obama could’ve advocated a lot more vigorously.

I’m convinced that it was a mistake for Mr. Obama to lay low during August while the conservatives were whipping the anti-reform forces into a frenzy with wild, unsubstantiated, fear-stoking claims in the media and at town hall meetings across the country. Their efforts dominated the press for the better part of a month (despite Mr. Obama giving speeches and appearing at a few town halls) and citizen support for the President and the public option plummeted.

President Obama had a chance to turn things around when he spoke to that joint session of Congress early last month. His speech that night was tremendous – strong, assertive and factual – and it included a compelling explanation of the benefits of a government-provided healthcare alternative. Unfortunately, that part of the speech was meaningless because, days earlier, the President had made it clear that he was willing to drop the public option. So, Mr. Obama essentially told the nation’s lawmakers: I still think the public option is the best thing for Americans but you don’t have to put it in the bill if you don’t want to. Instead of taking a demand based on principle, he asked the Congress for a favor.

President Obama needs to realize that Republicans on The Hill aren’t going to meet him halfway – especially when they’ve got some Democrats-in-name-only (the Blue Dogs) on their side. The Republicans don’t care about cooperating with Obama. They want to stop him. Their goal is to defeat his policy initiatives and to undermine him personally. They’re desperate to regain political control in Washington and they’re out for blood.

Early in the summer a leading Republican legislator said that healthcare would be President Obama’s Waterloo. Republicans believe that if they beat Obama on this crucial issue that he will be impotent for the rest of his Presidency and that will make him easy to defeat in the 2012 election. So, all this brouhaha isn’t really even about healthcare. It’s about power.

Legendary abolitionist Frederick Douglass famously said that “power concedes nothing without demand.” Instead asking favors from his stubborn, obstructionist opponents on The Hill, I would rather see President Obama take a firm stand for the public option (and all his policies, for that matter) – and put the Republicans and Blue Dogs on blast for siding with insurance companies instead of the American people. He might not get the votes he wants in the House and Senate but he will show that he is a man of courage and conviction and that will change the game.

Thanks for listening. I’m Cameron Turner and that’s my two cents.

THINK! IT AIN’T ILLEGAL…YET!

Cameron Turner is a Los Angeles-area native whose editorials, entertainment news features and audio documentaries have appeared on national radio networks, online and in print for over 20 years.