How NOT To Get Universal Health Care

One of my favorite bloggers, Ezra Klein, participated in a Network Nation panel where he quickly became 'the bad guy" because he is not a knee-jerk supporter of a single payer approach to universal health care. His critique of many current activists rings true to this fellow pragmatist:

"There was a lot of talk about "fighting" insurers and other special interests, but not much about what that fight will look like, or where it will take place, or who decides the winner. My argument, was that, for reformers, insurers aren't the real enemy. Setting them up as the opponent actually gives them too much credit. Insurers are stupid, profit seeking beasts -- the enemy is American politics, and in particular, the structural feature of the US Senate that have repeatedly killed health reform in the past.

No matter what your policy preference, that's where your organizing has to be focused, because that's where the actual fight happens: In Congress. Not on panels, or on blogs, or among the Left. In the US Senate, where you have to get to 60, or at least figure out how to get rough Democratic unity for using budget reconciliation and then convince Kennedy and Carper to vote "aye" on the same bill."

Developing a willingness to count votes is a skill that holds little apparent attraction to a lot of good folks on the activist left. This will become essential when (not if ) Senate Democrats need Republican votes to get to the magic 60 on their side come 2009. If Obama wins, Republicans will not be eager to accommodate legislative victories. There are ways to put pressure on them---and they start with not demonizing them and their political allies, as Ezra wisely observes.