I find this perspective from a TPM reader to be pretty much the most compelling argument about why people are so angry about the health care “compromise.”
I know there’s been a lot of game theory from people about how that would never work, etc. But the fact is that you can show leadership for big ideas and there’s always still room to compromise at the end. At least then it would be clear that there was no other way, that you put up the good fight, better luck next time.
Instead they feel like the people they voted for and trusted to lead them failed. And it’s hard to imagine making that same emotional commitment again in the future. Self defeating, yes. Temporary, maybe. But we’re talking primal stuff here – people don’t like wimps, not matter what party.
I’m completely on board with the understanding that this kind of nitty-gritty political negotiation is not fun, it’s not encouraging, and it doesn’t energize the base. I’m not happy about the health care bill right now either.
And so if people just want to vent, to express that anger, I can’t really fault them for it.
But (and it’s a big ‘but’), that only goes so far. There isn’t an easy dichotomy between thinking with your heart and thinking with your head. That’s not the divide here.
Because the reason why people who are saying “it’s not great, but it needs to get passed” think that is because they VALUE health care reform a lot. And the reasons that they value it vary a lot. For some people, it’s simply about cost – and is a slightly abstract principle of long-term governance. For some people it’s a very personal relationship to cost. For some people it’s a ‘selfish’ desire to, well, get health care. And for some people it’s some combination of those things – but also a deep sense of empathy.
I spent five years with no health care and, thankfully, never got sick. It was scary, but I was also in my early 20s and it’s easy to just kind of ignore the need for health care when you’re young and healthy.
Now I’ve got coverage – not great coverage, but something – so I the need for reform is a bit less of a personal matter. But it hasn’t changed my desire one bit. Because for me, the need for health care reform has always been about what we owe to each other as a society. It a question of basic values–how do we value each other, what kind of support should be able to take for granted?
Just because I’m proposing a more ‘rational’ approach to the mechanics of getting a bill done, it doesn’t mean anything about my goals. I want health care reform because it’s a travesty for people to go sick and society to not have a means of helping them get well. I think a lot of other people are in the same boat.
At the risk of painting too broadly, what I’d suggest is that the situation right now is a debate between people who are looking inward and those looking outward. That comment I linked to above is powerful, but notice who it’s about: the progressive, activist class. It’s about their expectations, what they thought they were getting out of Obama. You promised change, hope, etc.
That’s a perfectly valid response, obviously. But what’s left out is the broader set of people for whom half a loaf really is going to be a big deal. Because the subtext here is that people would be more willing to accept precisely the same compromise if the optics of it had been different. If it had been a tough fight from the administration. I know that a lot of people really think that a tougher negotiating stance would have moved things substantively, but I’m pretty much with Matt Yglesias and Ezra Klein and Nate Silver here: I just don’t see that this stuff really has much influence on the underlying dynamics. It’s tempting to BELIEVE that it does, but there just isn’t much evidence for it.
It’s similar to elections, which the media loves to sell as full of ‘decisive’ moments, twists and turns, and so on – despite the fact that the underlying conditions are MASSIVELY more important than such things. Ultimately, crazy Joe Lieberman and very conservative Ben Nelson were always going to be the 59th and 60th votes. Which means they were going to set the terms.
Because, once again, they don’t particularly care if a bill passes. If they had their druthers it wouldn’t pass, most likely. The fact that they’re being backed into a corner and being forced to sign onto a massively progressive piece of legislation IS the victory for the left.
So anyways, I get why people are upset and feel betrayed. I think that’s a reasonable response, but I will also submit that it’s more than a little selfish. It’s important to demonstrate that the positions of the left matter, and are part of the debate. But we’ve been doing health care for a year (or three years, or 15 years, of 100 years) and the time for symbolism is past.
Another TPM reader compares this to 2000 – and wonders at how quickly people seem to have forgotton what happens when we demand the whole cake or nothing at all. It turns out that Nader is a lunatic, Gore IS tremendously different from Bush, and that difference plays out in the real lives (and deaths) of a lot of real people:
But, but, but, Obama is so disappointing! Sure. I get it. And we should let him know it. But withdrawing support from Obama? When he has to deal with birthers, and tea partiers, and beckites, and the assorted nuts du jour? It’s bound to backfire. There is absolutely no upside to vitriol against Obama, and there is so much downside. Think of how much better off this country would be if we had a centrist, semi-corporate-friendly Democratic president from 2000 to 2008. Not ideal by a long shot, sure. But we lost so much in those years.
Pretty much.
When things are bad, you fight to make them better. You don’t give up entirely and hope that some kind of grand symoblic act will re-build the system from the bottom up. In short, you try to remember that change is a matter of a million small steps, not one grand one.
On the broader questions of ‘betrayal,’ ‘change,’ the advocacy of issues, and so on, Ed Kilgore has a really nice (and I think fair to all sides) piece here. It’s well-worth reading.