September Song

I've written on the following so often maybe I should just link to older posts and leave it at that. But every time I read a piece like Robert Reich's, it's as if the foolishness hits me anew.

Yep, it's another one of those "woe is me" articles, about how "my side is so smart and good but we're just not tough enough, unlike our opponents who are stupid liars but have the discipline and ruthlessness to beat us." I'll give you a taste:

The most important difference between America's Democratic left and Republican right is that the left has ideas and the right has discipline. Obama and progressive supporters of health care were outmaneuvered in August -- not because the right had any better idea for solving the health care mess but because the rights' attack on the Democrats' idea was far more disciplined than was the Democrats' ability to sell it.

Robert Reich is not a stupid man, so I don't understand how he can believe this. (I'll ignore the irrelevant point on whether or not the right has better ideas.) No matter how obvious it is to him that more government-run health care is a good thing, can't he understand that it's a tough sell? I'd say the Democrats were actually more disciplined about it than the Republicans, who were caught a bit flatfooted but recovered because of grass roots anger at the attempt to ram this massive overhaul through so fast (after having crammed other massive bills through during a deep recession).

In a country where the vast majority of people have health insurance, and the large majority like their coverage, planning big changes in the system will always open you up to attacks. (Fair attacks, I'd say, but that's not even the issue.) So proponents either have to promise all sorts of things they probably can't deliver (this will cover everyone and improve medical care while saving money) or admit that there are features of government intervention that may not be pleasant (less innovation, higher taxes, rationing, etc.). Obama tried to learn from the mistakes of Hillarycare, and handed over the fashioning of the bill to Congress, but, as Reich, and perhaps Obama, don't understand, the problem is with the concept itself, not the procedure.

Let's have a little more of his whining:

Over the last twenty years, as progressives have gushed new ideas, the right has became ever more organized and mobilized in resistance [...] I saw it in 1993 and 1994 as the Clinton healthcare plan [...] was defeated both by a Democratic majority in congress incapable of coming together around any single bill and a Republican right dedicated to Clinton's destruction. Newt Gingrich's subsequent "contract with America" recaptured Congress for the Republicans not because it contained a single new idea but because Republicans unflinchingly rallied around it while Democrats flailed.

Think about this. The progressives have all these "new" ideas. And what's Reich's primary example? Health care reform, which was tried 15 years ago, and which was an old idea then. Meanwhile, whatever Newt Gingrich did was just a bunch of tired ideas, but somehow he was able to spin them into gold because of Republican discipline and Democrat incontinence.

Robert, the Democrats had enough discipline to take the White House and both chambers of Congress by comfortable margins. If they're having trouble passing health care reform, it might be because they realize they've got a turkey on their hands.