Paul Starr on healthcare reform:
If Congress can complete work on health-care legislation and send it to the president (as of mid-January, the final bill is still under negotiation), it will be a stunning historical achievement and the most important liberal reform since the 1960s. It may also be the most underappreciated social legislation in recent history. Never in my experience has such a big reform been treated as so small. Never have Democratic members of Congress who are putting their careers on the line for something they believe in been so vilified as sellouts by influential progressives. And never have those progressives been so grudging in their endorsement of landmark legislation or so willing to see it defeated.
Exactly right. Elsewhere, James Morone looks to the legacy of Harry Truman to show Obama and the Democratic Party the way forward:
Truman submitted his healthcare plan in 1946 to mighty cries of “socialism!” So many groups lined up to blast the proposal that Congress extended its hearings and then buried the plan. The Democrats lost their congressional majorities, and Truman went into the 1948 reelection campaign polling below 30%.
If ever there was a time to retreat on healthcare, this was it. Instead, Truman (who had been, as he put it, “a dub of a speaker”) found his voice. He passionately embraced the policies he cared about, especially national health insurance. Fifteen times a day on his long, famous whistle-stop tour he would rise and scorch the medical lobbies and their congressional pals. Truman, of course, won that election. He never came close on healthcare reform, but he kept on fighting. As a result, he left his party a legacy, an ideal to fight for.
Truman didn’t get the healthcare plan he wanted, but he won reelection that year and Democrats took back the House. And thanks to his full-throated defense of universal healthcare, the ground was paved for LBJ to pass Medicare 15 years later.
Obama needs to provide the same defense tonight. And when he’s done, Democrats need to knock some heads, agree on a reconciliation compromise, and pass the Senate bill. If they don’t, disaster awaits in November.
