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Of invertebrates, donkeys and ideologues

By Steve Klinger

Democrats seem to be coming from all directions to oppose sweeping health care reform. Our own CD2 Congressman Harry Teague was one of 39 Democrats to vote against the House bill that squeaked through by a 5-vote margin late last night. Teague’s district has a rate of 25 percent of its non-elderly residents currently uninsured, and he’s taken relatively little campaign money from big drug or insurance companies, but none of that stopped the freshman legislator from voting no.

Teague has said publicly that he’s concerned about the cost of the reform bill. Sure he is; he’s worried about the cost of supporting it when next year’s election pits him against  Republican Steve Pearce, who held the seat before his unsuccessful run for the Senate. Teague figures, maybe correctly, that he’s already in trouble with conservatives for voting in favor of the House energy bill, with its cap-and-trade provisions – a real non-starter in the oil-and-gas country that makes up a goodly chunk of the district.

But Harry needs to wake up and realize he will never out-conservative Pearce. He’s got people right now by the thousands in his district who are suffering physically and economically and need health care reform in the worst way. If he’s going to go down, he may as well do so trying to improve the lot of his constituents instead of worrying about re-election or buying into red herrings like the sudden concern with the deficit.

Of course, Teague isn’t unique. Invertebrates dominate the Democratic Party, and they always slink away when the most critical issues come to the floor.

Another dominant characteristic of Democrats is their icon of the donkey, or jackass, exquisitely personified by Joe Lieberman. Technically an independent after Connecticut Democrats disowned him a few years ago, Lieberman took his revenge by not only supporting but campaigning for John McCain for president. John McCain. And Sarah Palin.

He even spoke at their convention. Senate Democrats were poised to oust him from a couple of committee chairmanships, including the powerful Homeland Security Committee, but the very Democrat he spurned the most – Barack Obama – told caucus leaders to spare Joe. After all, Joe said he wanted back into the fold, he was so contrite, and he would potentially be the 60^th vote in giving Democrats the supermajority needed to end debate on important issues (like health care reform?). Need we say more?

But Joe, ever-grateful to his own ego, is now showing his gratitude by proclaiming he will vote to filibuster any Senate health care bill with a public option. The most self-serving senator in recent memory explains that he will do so as “an act of conscience” because the authors of the bill really intend to undermine the insurance industry in the long run. Joe deserves to be disowned for the turncoat ingrate he is, not to mention his appallingly unenlightened views on foreign relations, homeland security and health care. And if both he and his chief enabler, Harry Reid, met with some misfortune in a dark alley, methinks few progressives would mourn.

Speaking of progressives, Dennis Kucinich joined with 38 Democrats and 176 Republicans in voting no on the House health care reform bill. Readers of this blog will recall that I once endorsed Kucinich for president and have often quoted him and praised his ideological purity. I gave Dennis a Grassroots Press T-shirt once when he campaigned in Las Cruces.  But dammit, Dennis, this is not the time to stand on abstract principle!

In an op ed explaining his No vote (http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/11/08-0), Kucinich cites a lot of impressive facts about the burden the insurance industry places on the cost of health care.  He correctly notes that insurance companies are the problem, not the solution. But he never explains why those companies are, like him, against the bill if indeed, as he argues, it helps the insurance industry.

Dennis doesn’t even mention the repugnant amendment allowed by the House leadership, which excludes almost all abortions from publicly paid coverage under the reform legislation. His objection to the bill seems to be that it is too weak, despite its public option, and therefore not worthy of passage. Well, yeah, we wanted a single payer bill, or a strong public option, but the House bill does offer some sweeping reform, including eliminating the pre-existing condition restriction, it does have a public option and it is a reasonable first step toward a movement leading to universal coverage.  Why else would virtually every breathing Republican oppose it?  What is the alternative to not supporting it? I’m not hearing one, Dennis.

That’s because the politically possible alternative is no health care reform, which means the deaths of at least 17,000 Americans each year, the suffering and the bankruptcy of many thousands more, the triumph of Republicans aiming to retake Congress, and a heavy blow to Obama’s re-election prospects. Not that BHO hasn’t disappointed us in many ways. But let’s not make the perfect the enemy of the good, not here, not now, especially not in a nation with the most unfair health care system in the western world.

So show a little backbone, Harry; get lost, Joe, and come down off the cross, Dennis, we need the firewood.

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