On the edge of Waterloo

Republican South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint says if Obama fails on healthcare, it will "break him"; it will be "his Waterloo." DeMint is right.

Those of a certain age remember the Jeff MacNelly cartoons during the Carter administration. As each day seemingly brought fresh setbacks, MacNelly's cartoon president shrank until he was a mini-me struggling amid the vast space of the presidential chair. Although he lacks Carter's tut-tut lecturing and, so far, foreign policy disasters, although Americans are proud of themselves for electing an African-American president, I sense Obama shrinking every day.

Many of the failures are not his. Obama inherited a nation in greater trouble than at any time since 1933, perhaps 1861. Not for nothing did the Onion have the headline: "Black Man Given Nation's Worst Job." In addition to the financial panic, Obama got two wars, foreign policy in disarray, a huge budget deficit, a government that had attacked civil liberties and enshrined torture as policy. He took over a nation that is in hock to China and the petro-states, that has been deindustrialized and seen its middle class devastated by policies to serve the corporate elite. And a nation ill-prepared for climate change or peak oil -- indeed, one digging itself ever deeper in the hole.

He and his party, however, continue to make critical missteps.

For Obama, a reliance on the Robert Rubin wing of his party on economic matters, shutting out important dissenting experts, particularly Nobel laureate Joseph Sitglitz, put his administration squarely in the camp of socialized losses and privatized profits. Now "everything's fine" at Goldman Sachs and the House of Morgan; AIG has gotten off without even a wrist-slapping, and the financial industry has slipped out of the serious re-regulation and criminal prosecutions that its economy-wrecking cascade of swindles deserved. "Nicely done," as McNulty says to Stringer Bell on The Wire.

Obama's hunger for consensus makes me as suspicious of the insurance industry's role in any healthcare reform as it does of the Lords of Finance in sabotaging the regulatory oversight of Wall Street. I would agree with the need for delay -- were it not synonymous with defeat of any chance to come close to providing secure health coverage for all Americans. That's something taken for granted in every other advanced nation in the world.

This was a time for Give 'em Hell Harry on certain issues. It becomes ever more clear that it was a mistake not to campaign on a clear, understandable reform of healthcare -- and one that made the insurance companies what they really are: the heartless and venal enemy of the American people. The president doesn't seem to have it in him. The feared Rahm Emanuel and the "Chicago Way" -- huh?

Obama's desire for bi-partisanship got him exactly nothing. Well, not nothing. It gave us a stimulus that wasted huge amounts on ineffective tax cuts, rather than spending on infrastructure that would generate the future economic activity to pay down George W. Bush's deficit. And it showed weakness to the Republicans, who have played brilliant defense. The Party that Wrecked America, so thoroughly repudiated in the election, has essentially been running the country by blocking.

The Democratic Party should be asking itself, What's a majority for? The Patriot Act was rushed through; fixing a healthcare system that has been gouging and killing Americans, and studied to death, for years -- that must be delayed. Which means it must be killed. Any "bi-partisan" bill will be worse than nothing, for it will entail using taxpayer money to add to the obscene profits of the insurance companies, big pharma and for-profit hospitals.

The so-called Blue Dog Democrats should stand tall or resign. Again, they have shown weakness, fearing Republican attacks in their "conservative" districts. Without leadership -- without countering the lies of the right and standing up for the majority of Americans who are afraid of losing healthcare, have lost it, are one illness from bankruptcy -- these Democrats deserve to be defeated. And they will be. If voters have a choice between a real Republican and a Democrat who is "bi-partisan," they will choose the former or just not vote.

The combination of today's fearful Democrats and the scorched-earth, nihilist Republicans -- always really doing the bidding of the powerful corporate masters -- will spell the end of the last chance to stop this country's decline. The Republicans offer no solutions. They don't want solutions. (What good, for example, is a tax-free health savings account when it won't even make a down payment on an ER visit, and the lost taxes -- if the people make enough to pay them -- add to the dreaded deficit??).

The Republicans have always hated Social Security. Had they faced a similar Democratic Party and White House in the 1930s, they would have killed it in its crib. They would have stopped rural electrification (actually a good analogy to the healthcare situation) to please their big utility masters. Without the true moderates and liberals of the old GOP, they would have stopped the Civil Rights acts and the Voting Rights Act. There never would have been clean air or water acts, no COBRA for laid-off workers, or a thousand goods that have flowed from effective liberal government.

The media's role has been nothing less than shameful: the overcoverage of the minority party's opposition with little skeptical treatment of its failed policies and laughable proposals; the fetish over the deficit after ignoring it for eight years, and no insight into the costs of doing nothing to provide universal healthcare, to address global warming, etc. While costs have gained the spotlight, the media have been water-carriers for the well-financed lies of the industry and Republicans. There has been little reporting on the damage the healthcare status quo causes to real people every day; the enormous profits this gamed system generates for the insurance industry; the huge amount big pharma spends on marketing, not research; the truth about the superior healthcare in most other advanced nations, especially Canada. With the nation facing unprecedented challenges, the electronic media frets over the president's birth certificate. However craven, bought or silly, the media have terrified the already spineless Democrats.

It is still early but the signs are not good. We must wonder: What will be the consequences for the country of another failed presidency?

How many can we stand before the last institutional props of the republic finally give way?

Maybe it would have been better for John McCain to have won. With Sarah Palin a heartbeat away. Apparently the Republicans didn't do enough damage to ensure their eternal ignominy -- and a solid, real Democratic majority in Congress. Now it may be too late.

Comments

[eclecticdog]

I was just thinking if things could be any worse if McCain had won, but then the thought of the chance that Palin could be our president ended that.

William Greider called it--Democracy is now only for the rich and powerful. The rest of us are sheep for the slaughter. Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Goldwater are turning over in their graves. Not that they would even be allowed into that "big tent" today.

Obama has proved himself to be weak, too much the thinker, and beholden to the corporate status quo. We 'hoped' for change, but got the same-old, same-old. He can't even jerk a knot in the tails of US military officers questioning his place of birth and refusing their duty!

It might be time to unplug the internet (and cable TV news)--the Kooks have taken it over.

[soleri]

I'm sympathetic to Obama because the megaphones are so disproportionately on the right that he necessarily has to kowtow to obsessive centrists and handwringers. Obama's effort to transcend partisan trench warfare was always doomed to fail because of this. People want black hats and white hats, not complex policy discussions. The American right has succeeded, despite their nearly complete incoherence, in controlling our political conversation. Of course, that means debasing it to surrealities, irrelevancies and venom without content.

There is no real policy debate in America outside a few blogs and academic symposia. The American left is now mostly courteous and reflective, not given to outbursts and outrage. Obama won his election not with a promise of "liberalism" but with a promise to stop anxiety spirals. The left is now self-neutralizing as a political force.

Absent some crystallizing shock in our national spirit, it's likely that Reaganesque nostalgia will sweep to victory in 2012, probably in the person of Mitt Romney. The rich will insulate themselves from the effects of their own self-interest. Eventually they, too, will reap the whirlwind.

[Mrs. Freeman's boy]

The Democrats' failure to overthrow their ineffectual leadership when they recaptured the White House has led to this. While Nancy Pelosi enjoys a more in-your-face stable of dems, good old Harry Reid is a creature of the habits he developed in his long years out of power. He gets along to get along. He never could learn how to challenge the Republicans with the filibuster, and now he can't seem to get things done faced with Republican filibusters and threats. All the talk about Blue Dog Democrats just miss the point. If Reid were a real leader the Blue Dogs would quake in their boots at the mention of his name. Doesn't happen so the result is he can't even control his own party, much less the senate.

[B Bennett]

Wow, you need to study recent history as opposed to simply repeating the sheep rhetoric of the left. It just makes you look incredibly stupid.

"Obama got two wars, foreign policy in disarray, a huge budget deficit..."

Insinuating that all of these issues are the results of President Bush's policies is just plain ignorant, if that was your bleak intention. Amazing how simpletons could always find everything wrong with Ms. Palin because of the patronage to SNL, but don't know how many zeroes are in a trillion!

All of you sheep need to go back to 5th grade math and start over from there...either train yourselves or go thru life just as dumb the minute you were born...