When I hear people like Keith Olbermann or Howard Dean say that liberals and leftists should withdraw their support from the watered-down Senate health care legislation, or when I read “That’s It, I’m Done With the Democrats” comments on left-wing blogs (Josh Marshall notes some examples, and responds thoughtfully), I’m reminded of my now-embarrassing support for Ralph Nader during the 2000 election. The emotional reaction is the same in both cases: Our political system tends toward compromise. But the parties to that compromise are powerful, self-interested, and bad. Withdrawal from the system, whether by refusing to vote, abandoning only-a-bit-better-than-nothing bills, or voting for a doomed protest candidate, is thus the only ethical option.
The premises are still dead right. (Here’s an example of the corruption of the stakeholders, for example, that just came to my attention today.) And for my Republican friends and loved ones (Hi, Dad!), whose arguments seem to begin and end with “The government should stay out of healthcare,” I have no new defence to offer, nor do I think one is necessary. (This guy does a nice job with some of the basics.) The whole idea of a “free market” depends on a social framework, including fraud protection, transparency guarantees, etc., which is why I’m baffled by the extremely selective anarchism of “free-marketers.” They disapprove of government when it prevents insurers from practicing deceit on their customers (“Your 1982 toothache is a pre-existing condition”), or when it stops rich people from dumping poisonous chemicals near the properties of poor people. But they like government intervention just fine when it, for example, stops smart young capitalists from selling cocaine near their childrens’ private schools, or hampers consumers’ efforts to learn something about the content of the food they buy.
But enough of that; I’m speaking as a liberal to liberals. It’s almost excusable that, as a twenty-two-year-old, I was so bored and irritated by the very notion of compromise that I didn’t want to vote for Al Gore (who appears almost radical now! Retirement was so good for him!). Almost excusable. And it is excusable that people who, prior to Obama, knew nothing about politics and remain low-information voters have lost some of their enthusiasm for him.
But that Howard Dean, whose fifty-state strategy is surely one reason for the Democrats’ current majority, wants to scrap a bill that “brings down insurance rates, expands Medicaid, offers the prospect of moderately priced insurance to tens of millions of the uninsured, forces insurers to take you on even if you have a chronic pre-existing condition, mandates minimum levels of coverage”: Well, that’s kind of embarrassing. This is the Howard Dean who screamed, not the Howard Dean who saved the DLC from irrelevance. Olbermann I don’t expect any better from, because he’s on commercial TV and thus saying stupid (“contrarian”/”controversial”) things is his mandate. But come on, Howard. Cowardly Senate Democrats are not going to suddenly nerve up during the 2010 (i.e., election-year) legislative season. In 2011 we’ll have lost seats. We get incremental improvement now or nothing.
Compromise is part of adulthood. Political movements that promise to save us from compromise are, well, they go by names like Leninism, Fascism, or Teabaggery. They live in a constant state of either fantasy elation (“Sarah Palin will take the country by storm!”) or hissy-fittery. They may blow up a few empty (Weathermen) or full (Tim McVeigh) buildings (at least the Weathermen left the nurseries alone!), but they end up having little impact on the larger society, except for mass revulsion. At their most innocuous, they’re disastrously stupid (Naderism in 2000) or amusingly trivial (performance artists who invite you to inspect their privates with a mirror). They’re too concerned with personal purity, and not concerned enough with what, given limited possibilities, is most likely to improve the lot of the several billion or so poor suckers they share this globe with. God, preserve me from ever lapsing into such “purity” again.
1 response so far ↓
Joel // December 18, 2009 at 3:11 am |
Enjoy hearing your thoughts as always Phil, and great to see you blogging again.
As a former Nadar Voter myself, who did some penance myself on my own blog a few years ago, I agree with the larger principle.
As for the example of the health care bill though, I’m not so sure. I guess the question is whether one sees this as a stepping stone towards further reform, or whether one sees this as a bait and switch which is meant to con the public into thinking no further reform is necessary. Based on what I’ve been reading about the new bill lately, I’m inclined to believe the latter. I think it might almost be better to go down fighting with the ship this time, and then have a chance at bringing it up again a few years later, rather than to take the risk that this will end the reform.
I worry that the republicans have also set themselves up quite nicely as well. Now that they’ve gutted the bill, when it doesn’t solve all the problems it is proported to solve, they’re going to say, “see, I told you so. Goverment intervention only makes things worse.”