| Assuming the notes of someone form the AFL-CIO who got to participate in a tea party conference call are accurate, the belief of the the teabaggers regarding health insurance is "...ANY bill coming out this year would be a failure for us...". I'm not surprised, given the strategy they've been using. People resorting to shutting down forums or intimidating opponents and elected officials have clearly decided upon rejecting any compromise.
Their "Waterloo" analogies also gave away the game in terms of how Republicans see this. It isn't a matter of differing over how to solve the problem and trying to find support to include their ideas in a bill they admittedly were never likely to like. In their eyes, this is a fight, not a debate. They use a war analogies, not to mention Nazi comparisons (and what is the point of bringing guns to forums?), because that's how they see health care. We would be foolish not to take them at their word that this is about, from the conference call notes, "We have an opportunity to realistically kill Obama's agenda."
Before anyone thinks I'm just giving a dire warning, I have some good news: they have made a strategic blunder. Stopping parts of Democratic bills they oppose was likely. Passage of a weak bill without something like a public option was possible and would indeed have struck a blow by splitting elected Democrats from their base. |
They didn't do this however. They gambled on an all or nothing strategy. They have declared the passage of any reform a defeat. Worse than that, this would be a defeat after they threw everything they have into the fight: they've spun and lied as blatantly as ever; they've spent enormous amounts of money on lobbying and TV ads; they've chosen to look like a mob, and even taken the bad PR that comes with requiring congressmen to have police escorts to leave events safely. They can always find more money, but in political terms, what do they have left?
Nothing. They're holding nothing back, even though they've set a definition of victory that will be very difficult to achieve. And there's our opportunity.
Since they define defeat as the passage of any bill at all, then victory for us means the passage of any bill at all. When the health insurance bills were first proposed, our assumption was that failure to have a public option at minimum was a defeat; maybe a crushing, "let's dread the next election" scale defeat. Not anymore. We don't need a perfect bill, or a good bill. Just any bill that makes US health insurance better than it was means we win. That allows us to stop being despondent over whether single-payer or even a public option will ever come, and just get one of these bills passed. With the conservatives' most reactionary wing so defeated, their ability to resist future improvements to our health insurance system will be greatly diminished. We will have the opportunity to make improvements over the next few years, especially as more people see horrible things didn't happen.
What I propose is that get better at setting expectations by running with this teabaggers' definition of defeat. If in the public mind, political success means at minimum a public option, and we don't climb that steep hill, we lose. If in the public mind success means some kind of reform passes, we are highly likely to win, and thereby face a weakened right wing for maybe years to come. |
