This Was A Big Win
By Tom Hayden
Progressives For Obama March 24, 2010
http://progressivesforobama.blogspot.com/
This is not the time for progressives to mourn the
defeat of single-payer or the public option, it is the
time to cheer the health care victory as an important
victory and prepare to stop the right-wing in their
tracks and discredit their religion of market
fundamentalism. It's the time to push further against
that same fundamentalism by demanding such reforms as
regulation of Wall Street and a rollback of the Supreme
Court decision on campaign finance - all before the
November election.
We did not achieve what was politically-impossible,
Medicare for All. Insurance companies and Big Pharma
will benefit from the health care legislation, but the
Machiavellians always get their pound of flesh in
exchange for conceding reform. We added new health
protections for millions of Americans, opened
possibilities for further health reforms, and avoided
the beginning of the end of the Obama era, which frankly
is what the unified right-wing is still trying to bring about.
It is the nature of social movements to fragment and
decline when they achieve victories which fall short of
their hopes and dreams. It is the nature of counter-
movements to become more dangerous and unified when they
feel threatened with decline.
There is plenty of analysis of how the public came out
ahead in this final package despite all its flaws and
chicanery. Let me add one fundamental point no one has mentioned:
Passage of a trillion-dollar health care package means a
trillion dollars not available to the Pentagon for their long war.
In his book making the case for the
Goliath, the conservative political philosopher Michael
Mandelbaum wrote of his fear that Sixties social
programs will undermine the appetite and resources for
empire, which he described as an American "world
government." [MM, The Case for Goliath: How
as the World's Government for the 21st Century, Public
Affairs, 2005]
"Democracy [will] favor butter over guns", Mandelbaum
worried. As programs like health care expand and social
security cutbacks are fought, "it will become
increasingly difficult for the foreign policy elite to
persuade the wider public to support the kinds of
policies that, collectively, make up the American role
as the world's government. Foreign policy will be
relegated to the back burner", he groused.
We have no moral right or even competence to be "the
world's government", of course. The more we invest in
our domestic needs - health care, schools and
universities, environmental restoration, green jobs -
the more unsustainable become trillion-dollar wars in
of an alternative foreign policy lie in building an
alternative domestic one. #
Tom Hayden, a former California state senator, is the
author, most recently, of The Long Sixties: From 1960 to
Barack Obama (Paradigm).
Senator Tom Hayden, the Nation Institute's Carey
McWilliams Fellow, has played an active role in American
politics and history for over three decades, beginning
with the student, civil rights and antiwar movements of
the 1960s.
Hayden was elected to the
in 1982, where he served for ten years in the Assembly
before being elected to the State Senate in 1992, where
he served eight years.
==========
After The Vote
by Leon Wofsy
March 23, 2010
http://leonsoped.blogspot.com/
My email batch today included angry condemnation by some
of my fellow leftists of the new Health Reform Act and
everyone who supported Sunday's historic vote. Laura
Bonham of Progressive Democrats of
which I'm a member, called it "A Kafka Moment" and
bitterly attacked MoveOn for congratulating the
Democrats who voted for it. Ralph Nader and Chris Hedges
scorned "craven Democrats", especially attacking Howard
Dean. This was an echo of the attacks on Dennis Kucinich
for "folding" when he announced he would vote "yes".
That's certainly not the way I see things. The times
call for militancy and resolve, but not for a nasty war
against anyone who sees today's momentous challenges
from a broader perspective than do Bonham, Nader and
Hedges. I can't support PDA in an assault on MoveOn. Nor
can I conceive of a significant American left if Dennis
Kucinich, Al Franken, Barbara Lee, Barney Frank, John
Lewis and Bernie Sanders just sold us out by favoring a
"yes" vote on the final bill.
Is it possible to see two realities at once? Is it
possible to be highly critical of limitations and
compromises in the new legislation and yet to see it as
an advance? Is it possible to recognize a flawed
process, with serious shortcomings, and still
acknowledge that in its final stage Barack Obama and
Nancy Pelosi did a praiseworthy job of advancing health
care as a basic right and beating back the violent
ultra-right counter-attack against the results of the
2008 elections?
It had better be possible to see the whole contradictory
reality as we go on from here. It's never been more
necessary to fight hard on a host of vital issues, yet
never more necessary to bridge gaps and hold a
progressive majority together. Whatever the
Administration does or doesn't do, holding back on
critical struggles is not an option for leftists and
progressives - not on ending the wars, fighting for
immigration reform, universal health care and jobs
programs, or fighting cuts in education and social
welfare. While pushing vigorously for the President and
Congress to live up to the promise of change that swept
the 2008 elections, we have the responsibility to do
everything we can to defend and extend what's positive
and hopeful. We cannot dismiss for a single moment that
a rightist and racist cabal has targeted the Obama
presidency, trying desperately to reverse the historic
opportunity to change
vigilante crusade aims not just at a return to something
like a Bush/Cheney regime, but something far further to
the right that's closer to fascism.
I'm glad the Health Reform bill became law and not
Obama's "
can do a lot better and the door is open. It might have
been slammed shut not just on health care, but on any
possibility for progressive headway in the next several years.
Leon Wofsy is Professor Emeritus of Molecular and Cell
Biology / Immunology at the
he was almost forty years old. Earlier, for more than
fifteen years, he was a leader of Marxist youth
organizations. That experience began during the student
upheavals at
1930s, and encompassed the time of McCarthyism in the
1950s. He became a professor at UC Berkeley in 1964 just
as the Free Speech Movement was about to erupt. He is
the author of many scientific papers and articles on
social issues. He edited a book on the Cold War, Before
the Point of No Return (Monthly Review Press, 1986). His
memoir, Looking for the Future (IW Rose Press, 1995) is
available online in the Free Speech Movement Archives,
Book Collection, UC Bancroft Library.
==========
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