Countdown To Wednesday And Obama's Destiny Meet And Greet

Wednesday I won't be sitting in the living room watching President Obama's speech about health care reform. Instead I'll be at the Air America studios in Burbank watching President Obama's speech about health care reform, right across the freeway. They asked me to help provide some analysis of the speech. I pray to God I can start by saying I was all wrong about Obama and that he is courageous and that he does have vision and is free from the corrupting influence of corporate donors and creepy, grasping courtiers. I hope I have to eat my words of yesterday when I said that "American working families who had pinned their hopes for real change on someone as ill-equipped to rule as Nicholas II was" are in for a disaster.

I was somewhat heartened this morning when I watched Rep. Maxine Waters on ABC-TV's This Week. After the taping (which also included Robert Gibbs), the program's host, George Stephanopoulos, wrote that he felt Obama will make the case for a public option Wednesday. Watch Maxine:



Though you would never guess as much from the media coverage, House liberals have far more votes in the House than Blue Dogs and other reactionary Democrats. And they are clearly telling Obama that they will not vote for a bill that doesn't include a robust public option. Obama's chief advisor, David Axelrod, told Politico yesterday that Obama is not dialing back his support for the public option.

So, unless Emanuel can put together a coalition of Republicans and Blue Dogs in the House to pass an Insurance Industry and Wall Street-friendly bill that Senate Republicans and their craven DLC allies can jump right on, Obama will be faced with either forgetting about meaningful health care reform-- and any chance for a successful presidency-- or doing something we are yet to see him do-- take off the gloves, stop trying to make people who pray that he dies and goes to hell like him, and start fighting for the American people who elected him. Yesterday the editor's of the NY Times said the same thing, although in their own words:

President Obama’s address to Congress about health care reform on Wednesday is the moment for him to stand tough for a large and comprehensive plan. This is no time to yield on core elements of reform or on the scale of the effort in search of enough Republican support to provide the veneer of bipartisanship, or even the one or two Republican votes needed to overcome a filibuster.

As a political tactic, Mr. Obama has thus far simply issued broad principles for reform and left it to Congress to flesh out the details, leaving great uncertainty as to what reforms he considers essential. Given the raucous, often ill-informed attacks on Democratic proposals over the past month, and the clear aim of most Republicans to oppose any bill, no matter how much he compromises, Mr. Obama now needs to spell out in some detail what he wants and how it would benefit both the uninsured and most other Americans as well.

Mr. Obama needs to highlight the concerns that got many people agitating for government help in the first place-- the rising premiums and co-payments required for their health insurance policies, and the likelihood that, if forced to buy insurance on their own, perhaps after losing a job, they would be unable to afford it or even be denied coverage because of pre-existing conditions.

At a minimum, we believe Mr. Obama should declare himself in favor of covering as many of the uninsured as possible in the near future; should insist that insurers grant and renew coverage without regard to health status; and should insist on new insurance exchanges in which people without group coverage and those working for the smallest employers could buy insurance at large-group rates.

The Times' editors then go off track by suggesting Obama stand firm on the public option but possibly bargain it away later. Fortunately they won't be in on the negotiations and there are senators-- like Jeff Merkley, Sherrod Brown, and Bernie Sanders-- who will blow the whistle on anyone who tries that tactics, not to mention scores of House members-- according to Anthony Weiner, at least 100-- who will vote against any bill that bargains away the public option to please powerful corporate campaign donors.

I've been speaking to dozens of members of Congress and their staffers about how this is likely to go. No one really knows but late last week one of the House leaders standing firm on the public option, Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) asked me to thank the 2,053 individual donors who had donated to his re-election campaign on the Blue America page dedicated to thanking stalwart Democrats. One of his political staffers, Mary Bruch, told me that Nadler and his staff are "thrilled" by the effort and that rather than sending out over 2,000 letters would we just post a greener response by publishing her message online. Happy to do so:

Thank you for your recent contribution to my campaign and your dedication to health care reform. Your effort to make affordable, dependable health care access enshrined in law as a fundamental right is a great help to my work in Congress. The recent ActBlue campaign is a testament what we have accomplished together by holding the line and demanding a robust public option as an essential element to health care reform. Your support is a demonstration of what we can accomplish in the future. 

In addition to winning on health care, we must strive together to create more green jobs to secure our energy independence and improve our infrastructure, reform the financial industry, restore the rule of law by investigating abuses of executive power which threaten our civil liberties and Constitutional rights, and finally deliver equal rights to LGBT Americans by repealing discriminatory policies such as DOMA and so called “don’t ask don’t tell” (to name a few important issues we are dealing with now).

Your contribution will also enable me support progressive candidates throughout the country as we look to build on the sweeping success of the 2008 elections. House Republicans are persistently obstructing every important piece of Democratic legislation; and they are targeting and smearing congressional Democrats who lead the fight. I will not allow the Republicans to derail the progressive agenda when so much is at stake; and with your support I am in a much stronger position to move this country forward.

Once again, thank you for your support. I am honored to have you as a member of my online community. In the coming weeks, I will call on you to fight with me-- harder than ever-- to seize our opportunity to enact progressive change. As you know, our resolve will be greatly tested in the coming weeks, and we your need passion and engagement to hold fast. Please feel free to contact me or my political staff, Adam Nashban and Mary Bruch, anytime with your questions and ideas at 212-352-0370 or info@jerrynadler.com.

Darcy Burner, the woman who's speech at Netroots Nation inspired us to start the campaign, explained at Open Left why progressives should and will kill the health care reform bill if it comes back from the bribe-riddled Senate as a Corporate Welfare bill with no public option.

A no-public-option bill would mandate that every American buy health insurance while ensuring skyrocketing premiums. What sane politician would vote for a bill like that?

The public option is essential to the success of the reforms-- not merely for political reasons, but for fundamental policy reasons.

Simply put, if you want other reforms like elimination of pre-existing condition exclusions, you need a public option because:

• Reforms such as eliminating pre-existing condition exclusions only work if you have an individual mandate.

• If you have an individual mandate, rates will skyrocket unless you have a public option to provide competition (or rate controls, which aren't even on the table).

So what opponents of the public option are proposing is that we pass a bill that will spike the cost of health insurance at the same time we require everyone by law to buy it.

Given that as the alternative, we are in fact better off with no reform.

So far our campaign has helped aggregate almost $415,000 from over 6,800 netroots donors from across the country with the help of bloggers, big and small, and from grassroots activists everywhere. The 65 members of Congress on the list have signed letters to Nancy Pelosi and Kathleen Sebelius or have made definitive pledges to FDL activists that they plan to vote against any faux-reform bill that doesn't, at minimum, present a public option. The average donation has been $60, less than $1 per congressmember. All those $1 contributions have added up to especially hefty totals for outspoken members like Barney Frank ($12,858), Anthony Weiner ($10,579), Lloyd Doggett ($9,685), Dennis Kucinich ($8,113), Donna Edwards ($7,909), Jim McDermott ($7,398), and Barbara Lee ($7,099). Poised to cross the $7,000 mark next: John Conyers (MI), Eric Massa (NY), Keith Ellison (MN), Raul Grijalva (AZ), Earl Blumenauer (OR), Pete DeFazio (OR), Lynn Woolsey (CA), Maxine Waters (CA), and Mike Capuano (MA). Want to help out? Even $1 makes a difference.



And if the tactic of rewarding our friends isn't what you're looking for, how about helping us punish the Bad Dogs here?