David Van Os On Massachusetts Election

Following the Democratic defeat in Massachusetts, Texas progressive David Van Os provides the following thought:

Yesterday in Massachusetts, one of the most reliably Democratic states in the country, the voters handed Ted Kennedy's seat to a Republican who campaigned against the Obama administration's health care plan.

For the sake of our country, I hope this turn of events serves as a wake-up call to President Obama and his advisors. Barack Obama did not win the presidency by calling out for caution and incrementalism. We all know this. He won the presidential election because he inspired a significant winning margin of voters with his bold calls for hope and change. Yet for Obama's first year in office his message to the populist base that gave him a mandate was, "Don't expect too much". The audacious, ringing cry "Yes we can!" turned into the cautious admonition, "No we can't". I didn't just start saying this today. Here is a Letter to the Editor of mine that the San Antonio Express-News published last July. Working People Get the Short End of the Stick Again Many of the populist-minded grassroots voters who formed the core of Obama's voter base do not feel motivated to rally around a health care plan that the robber barons who created the health care crisis helped to write, and that did not and does not offer anything bold or visionary to be inspired about. This was a time for something bold and visionary, but we got incrementalism and caution instead. Instead of fighting for the people we got a deplorable concentration on appeasing the opponents of progress.

The "public option" conceived by the White House was minimal anyway, but it would have at least brought some change and started the country on the right track. Without it, the administration bill becomes regressive - it will strengthen, not diminish, the oligopoly power of the insurance and health care robber barons, and make real change more remote than it is now. The Obama administration and its allies in the Congress gave the Obama support base nothing to get excited about. As a consequence the mass of that support base did not and is not infusing passion or energy into the health care fray. Meanwhile the Employee Free Choice Act, which as originally introduced would have at long last re-energized the labor movement to the benefit of health care and every other socio-economic need of working people (the best solution for health care always has been and always will be a strong collective bargaining system powered by strong unions), got rudely shoved to the side. All in all, the robber barons continue to run the show and the blue collar and white collar working Americans continue to get the short end of the stick. David Van Os (Published by San Antonio Express-News in Letters to the Editor, July 2009)