Let’s Win the Health Care Battle!

by Larry Greenley, Director of Marketing

What a difference a month makes! Just a month ago when I was writing this column for the August Bulletin, it appeared that Congress would be voting on President Obama’s healthcare legislation before leaving for its August break. However, at the same time as polls began showing that a majority of Americans were against President Obama’s healthcare legislation, and just as Obama’s approval rating was continuing its six-month slide by slipping below 50 percent approval, the Blue Dog Democrats in the House were causing delays in the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s markup of its healthcare bill, and a bipartisan working group on the Senate Finance Committee was demanding more time to finish work on a compromise bill. All of these factors forced Congress to delay voting on healthcare reform until after its August break, even though Obama had “ordered” them to pass a healthcare reform bill before the break.


Next, some really extraordinary things began to happen. On August 2 Senator Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) and Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services, hosted a forum on healthcare reform at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. Many hundreds of citizens turned out. Most of them were very vocal in their opposition to a government takeover of our nation’s healthcare system as provided for in President Obama’s legislation. Some asked excellent questions over the PA system, while others yelled out their disapproval. Most of the crowd joined in vigorous jeering and booing when Specter and Sebelius were not responsive to the questions being asked. The next night Rep. Steve Kagen (D-Wis.) had a healthcare “listening session” in Green Bay with the same type of outcome. Three hundred citizens, mostly opposed to the Obama healthcare plan, were seated, but another several hundred had to be turned away for lack of seating. The crowd was very vocal in its disapproval of the Obama healthcare plan and acted very much as the crowd had acted in Specter’s meeting the day before. Many other Democrats were holding meetings that same week with very similar results. In short, thanks to YouTube videos of these events, Democrats had a PR fiasco on their hands.


Nonetheless, within a couple days after the Kagen town hall meeting, President Obama and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) had rolled out a three-pronged counteroffensive. First, the DNC released a one-minute ad demonizing and ridiculing the citizens who were showing up at town hall meetings to protest the Obama healthcare reform legislation, referring to them as a “mob.” Second, the White House posted a blog and video featuring Linda Douglass, the communications director for the White House’s Health Reform Office. In her three-minute video, Douglass pointedly asked Americans to report any “fishy emails” or other “disinformation” regarding healthcare reform to flag@whitehouse.gov. Third, President Obama sent an email to the thirteen million people on the email list for Organizing for America (www.barackobama.com), the successor organization to Obama for America, the online movement that played a very important role in electing Obama President in 2008. Obama opened his email to his millions of followers with “This is the moment our movement was built for.”


Thus, the battle over healthcare reform has intensified. At first, it would appear that Obama’s three-pronged counterattack is risky, seeing how he’s making a frontal attack on the majority of Americans who are opposed to his healthcare plan. He’s ridiculing them, operating a “snitch” system of questionable legality against them, and calling on his millions of online followers to show up at community events in support of his healthcare reform proposal in order to neutralize his opponents, a tactic that will reinforce the  negative images from recent alternative media exposés of his close ties to ACORN and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). However, Obama’s counterattack is not optional. He needs to win the legislative battle over healthcare. The damage to his political capital from losing would be immense. So, even though there is a good chance that he will not prevail, he must take the chance. Playing it safe would end his momentum for (revolutionary) change.

I’ve emphasized all of the above to make it crystal clear just how important the healthcare battle has become. We need our members and allies to keep the pressure on the members of Congress. Email them, phone them, write them, fax them, but above all else, visit their offices and town halls in large numbers and be sure they get the message that voting for Obama’s healthcare plan (or any Republican compromise bill that would permit, no matter how well hidden in the language of the bill, an eventual government takeover of healthcare) would be political suicide.


This is definitely a winnable battle!


ACTION SUMMARY

Put virtually all of your activism energy into the battle against Obama’s plan for a government takeover of healthcare. Email Congress by clicking “Legislative Action” under the “Action” menu item on www.JBS.org. Go to www.Congress.org for phone numbers and office addresses.