Up with the sun this morning catching the news before running off to work. Coffee and Richard and Linda Thompson far too loud for this early. Bombings in the Caucuses, the health care debate, summer storms, Afghan elections, blah, blah. Usually politics takes some time off in August. The health care imbroglio has meant that this August feels like a campaign season.
The Obamaists let it be known in leaks over the weekend that they were going to drop the “public option” from their plan in the hope of getting the Blue Dogs on board. I wonder what concessions they are going to make to the Progressives Caucus’ demands? Oh wait, they’re not making any demands so they get no concessions. Bernadette McAliskey once said that one of the lessons of the civil rights movement in Ireland was that “the less you ask for the less you get”. At this point the progressives having demanded nothing will get nothing in return.
That the debate is skewered right is not by chance. It is, after all, the corporate media that has largely defined the terms of the debate. Thus even though the single -payer position is held by a substantial part of the population it is ignored while the “your health care, your problem” crowd gets lots of time. Even if the single-payer movement were stiffened by some more vertebrae it would be a tough going fight to get the message out. That it is, in far too many cases, equivocating its position just makes it that much harder.
We can talk all we want about alternative media, I support it, but until it is backed up by power it is only information. To make a real challenge requires power, social weight, to back it up. The corporate media have power, that is why they are listened to, even when the majority is opposed to what it says.
I usually don’t call out left groups on this site, but on occasion one must. Freedom Road Socialist Organization, of which Bill Fletcher is perhaps the best known member, having supported Obama “from the left” in an attempt to relate to Obama’s supporters and build a left pole in the Dems milieu have now totally fudged the health care debate and come out for the reform bill, any reform bill it seems, that comes from the desk of Obama in the name of “fighting the right”. The move from relating to the milieu to supporting the policies has been a short one.
I have a lot of respect for many FRSO comrades, but they are building on their mistaken support of Obama. Having to produce straw men to bolster their argument, as they do is this article, only proves that they’ve painted themselves into a corner. The main bogeyman seems to be the “purist”. They deride these “purists” who refuse to support a bill that would, in fact, codify much that is awful in the the health care system shutting down the possibility of real reform. Who are these wreckers? Paper-selling Bolsheviks packing meetings and shouting for workers’ militias to fight for health care? No, they are single-payer supporters who are attacking Obama’s corporate based agenda. If health care reform goes down it will hardly be because of the intransigence of the single-payer folks and shame on FRSO for implying it.
Aside from long term class interests the short term interests of the working class and social movements demand the mobility that independence allows. It seems now that the only alliance FRSO envisions is the one between the left and the liberals. As if that alliance were natural and the only one to be had. Leftists are not just more liberal liberals, we have different agendas, world views, class interests, etc. The alliance the single payer movement needs is with itself first and foremost. That may sound flip, but it is true. You’ve got to work your muscles to get stronger.
“Purity” has nothing to do with it. The working class is, in its way, as “dirty” as the other classes produced by capital. Anyone expecting to remain “clean” fighting within the working class is SOL. In larger terms fighting for independent class politics is not to ensconce oneself in a purist redoubt, but because, and this is elemental for a Marxist, the road from the class “of itself” to the class “for itself” is paved by the struggle for independence. It is through the struggle to define its interests from its own perspective that the working class develops the skills and conceptions necessary to act on those interests; to emancipate itself.
This scattered-brain post doesn’t do the debate a good service and I apologize for that. I imagine that others will comment on the FRSO statement and I’ll try to link to those critiques as I find them. OK, off to work. Let’s hope I don’t get hurt. I don’t have health care.
Rustbelt Radical 
Carl is one of the only people I know who read Mao and decided to volunteer as a running dog.
That said, it’s shocking that these leftists work on behalf of the White House. They support forcing me to buy “insurance” from some gangster capitalist outfit so Obama gets a “win”?
Why doesn’t he form the Bill Fletcher Party for Liberal Career Hacks?
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Check out Dave Lindorf’s article in Counterpunch today; it ought to be titled “straight from the Horses’ Mouth.” Only in Carl’s case, it would have to be from the horse’s other end, since unlike Lindorf, he’s still spouting the same shit.
A few choice tid-bits:
“…because (Obama) has taken the concept of selling out to corporate interests and compromising with Republicans to such remarkable heights … progressives hopefully can no longer be confused about the irretrievably corrupted nature of the Democratic Party.”
“On virtually every issue of importance, President Obama has sided with corporate interests and the wealthy.”
“On the issue of war and peace, he has sided with the military-industrial complex, with a policy of permanent occupation of Iraq and endless war in Afghanistan, as well as continued funding of the country’s colossal armory of death…”
“Health care reform has become a sad joke, with the emerging “reform” bill looking for all the world like the Rube Goldberg creation of the Clinton era that properly went down in flames. Instead of taking on the insurance industry, the hospital companies and the pharmaceutical industry and other parts of the profit-making medical-industrial complex, Obama cut deals with all of them behind closed doors, assuring that their profits would be left untouched, and that they could essentially write their own “reform” bill…”
“Obama has been a corporatist through and through on all the major issues that matter…Most of the left in the US, from the labor movement to the environmentalist movement to the anti-war movement, has to date remained glumly quiescent as Obama has sold them out on each of their key issues.”
“But here is the silver lining: The sell-out this time is so much more blatant, and so much more serious, than it was with Clinton…Clearly the labor movement needs to recognize that hitching its fortunes to the Democratic Party has been and will continue to be a dismal failure.”
While we told you so from the get go, better late than never!
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Carl,
See the comments policy. Have you come here to piss on my rug?
RR
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Cut the crap yourself, MN Roy. I didn’t take a soul ‘off the street,’ but I did work with an army of young people, Blacks and labor activists who went into this arena without asking anyone’s permission, least of all mine. If you disdainfully ignored them or had nothing to say but ‘Don’t vote!’, that’s your problem, not ours.
If you spent less time ‘looking at empty streets’ and more time organizing to fill them, you might be better off. We tripled our size here locally as a result of the campaign, and we’re in the streets week in and week out, around the wars and HR 676. We are everywhere there is to be seen around here–on the streets, mass meetings of workers around any number of issues, confronting our Blue Dog whenever he shows up, getting city councils to endorse HR 676, and so on.
There are a few of you types hanging out up near the University of Pittsburgh, but we don’t see them anywhere around here, which is just as well as far as I’m concerned. But we’ll probably run into them around the G20 demos–we’ll be with the labor contingent; you’re welcome to have the Black Bloc crew all to yourselves.
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Cut the crap Carl. No-one’s buying it. You took people off the streets in order to put them into the voting both for a pro-war and pro-Wall Street Democrat and now we’re paying the price for it. 60% of the American people support some kind of national health care and probably 99% of the people who voted for Obama support it as well. But your “lesser evil” takes his marching orders from the millionaires who own him rather than the millions who voted for him so we ain’t getting any more national helath care than we are withdrawal from Iraq. And since you guys demobilized people to get the Dems into office, there’s no-one (except for the right) out there to hold Obama’s feet to the fire the way you claimed there would be either.
Just look at the empty streets every time your pal Obama either esclates one of his wars, gives more welfare to Wall Street or destroys the lives of of more auto workers and further decimates more working class neighborhoods in Michigan. If Bush was doing it, you, Leslie Cagan and the rest of your pals would be out in droves, urging everyone on to “fight the right” and the “Bush agenda.” Only now that there is a Democrat in the White House and the Democrats are in control of both Houses of Congress, you are all nowhere to be seen. Only that’s what happens when ex-radicals go into that Roach Motel of the left, you go in but you don’t come out. Not that we’d miss you and your ilk, but unfortunately, far too many well meaning activists follow you in there
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What in the world are you talking about?
I demonstrate against the wars every week with our ‘Out Now!’ and ‘Healthcare Not Warfare’ banners, every Saturday at the Beaver County courthouse. We also supported the UFPJ mobilization against the wars and the economic crisis last April on Wall St. The war have taken a back seat to the economic crash as a priority among the masses, and many activists as well, but certainly not because we called anything off.
We have our independent working class agenda, which we pushed before, during and after the 2008 campaign–‘Out Now,’ ‘for HR 676,’ ‘for EFCA,’ ‘Against Racism, for Green Jobs,’ and ‘Debt Relief for Students’.
We’re doing quite well with our mass democratic work, thank you. Check it out on http://beavercountyblue.org if you like. But you’re welcome to the ultra-left swamp. It’s all yours.
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“Carrying water for the tea-baggers and rightwing populism?”
And what are you and your “progressive” pals carrying these days, Carl? Body-bags for Obama’s imperialist wars; certainly not picket signs at any anti-war rallys…or any other demos for that matter, since you and your UFPJ cronies managed to finally demobilize the anti-war movement (and every other one as well) for the Democrats.
Now that your “lesser evil” has followed Bill Clinton’s script and is pushing more and more workers and middle class people into the arms of the right with his pro-Wall Street agenda, you and the rest of the liberal left will, no doubt, rally round the pro-war, pro-Wall Street and anti-single payer Obama regime, in yet another not so popular front against racism and fascism, rather than counterposing any kind of independent working class agenda. The results are all to predictable. Perhaps Sarah Palin will be the next Newt Gingrich, only a lot cuter.
Let’s hope we don’t have to wait a full 8 years for another Battle of Seattle against this neo-liberal errand boy of Wall Street, the Pentagon and the medical and insurance industries. Most working people don’t have 8 weeks thanks to Obama’s policies, especially in Michigan!
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Even if HR 676 loses, as is likely, it’s still an important benchmark for its growth and strength. And ‘states rights’ get you no cigar; it’s the way the Canadians got their single payer, a few provinces first, before the whole country. If you’re for single-payer, how exactly do you propose to get it and why are you trashing the tactics of this movement. This battle isn’t really about Obama or whatever half-assed plan the Dems come up with–and it’s going to be a protracted one. These steps matter in keeping single-payer visible and growing.
We told people to vote for Obama over McCain in part because he was the ‘liberal imperialist’ rather than the neo-con. We were not indifferent between the two evils.
I’m not trumpeting for any compromise. I work every day for ‘Out Now’ from the wars, and HR 676 as well as socialized medicine, and haven’t backed away from any of them. But that doesn’t blind me to what is clear a racist onslaught on Obama from the right, and I’ll help those I disagree with in beating it back, and so should you–unless you’re into carrying water for the tea-baggers and rightwing populism.
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First off, all this proves that any reform is won in the street and not in committee. They well may get a vote. That’s the best way to dismiss it and move on after all. How many of these same “progressives” will withhold their vote from the abysmal “compromise” Obama and the insurance companies have made when it comes up for a vote? Not many is my wager. So their “opposition” means what? Obama already knows their votes are in the bag. As for Kucinich, it’s good to see the progressives raise the banner of “state’s rights” in this fight. You seem to think every retreat is a victory. Or perhaps you know they aren’t victories, yet your ill advised support for the liberal imperialist Obama means that you have to pawn them off as victories. Either way the effect is the same. And it is, if I can be excused, increasingly pathetic. As the war(s) are heating up and any chance at meaningful health care reform is being dismissed you come here to sound the trumpet for further compromise? Go on with your bad self Carl, but the schtick don’t sell here.
RR
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The Progressive Caucus is demanding a floor vote in Congress on HR 676, and it looks like they’ll get one. Also the ‘Kucinich Amendment,’ allowing single-payer options to be implemented of a state-by-state basis. That’s a good possibility, too. If you want to follow this more closely, rather than spouting off not knowing what’s going on, you can follow CCDS’s Randy Shannon on http://beavercountyblue.org
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