Those were the words of David Axelrod in June of this year on Meet the Press. He was asked about the public option by David Gregory.
MR. GREGORY: Well, let's be clear what we're talking about as well. You're talking about a public sponsored, a government sponsored healthcare plan that can exist side by side with private insurance plans, and that allows Americans without insurance to make a choice between a private and a public plan.
It's interesting. In the press conference this week, the president said any opposition to that is illogical. But at the same time, he won't draw a line in the sand, nor will you in your previous answer.
..."MR. AXELROD: Look, we believe strongly in, in a public choice; not one that's subsidized by the government, but one that will embrace the best practices, that will reduce healthcare costs and give people the best quality care.
No bright lines drawnBut here is the response from Axelrod that really stuck in my mind that day.
MR. AXELROD: Look, we have gotten a long way down the road by not drawing bright lines in the sand.."
They have still drawn no lines about too many issues that are dear to the Democratic base. The Stupak amendment shows that there is room for anything that doesn't offend the right wing. Not so much for the party's own activists who believe almost overwhelmingly in the reproductive rights of women.
The Stupak bill was not progressive...it was absolutely regressive in nature.
I was a little upset that Bill Clinton when talking to the Senate yesterday urged them to pass something, anything. That would be acceptable if we were not in the majority, but it does bother me since we don't have to "settle" for less. We don't have to just pass "anything". We have the majority to pass a good bill.
So its not important to be perfect here. It’s important to act, to move to start the ball rolling, to claim the evident advantages that all these plans agree with. And whatever they can get the votes for, I’m going to support.
Bill Clinton Urges Fast Action by Senate DemocratsWe have the majority to draw very bright lines in the sand and stand up for the rights of women and gays.
Peter Beinart who was often called a liberal voice on TV weighed in on how smart the Stupak Amendment was. His statement is outrageous to me. I find it just as offensive as I found him before the war when he was spouting the right wing pro war rhetoric.
From The Daily Beast:
House Democrats were right to sacrifice abortion protections to get health care passed. Peter Beinart on why that strategic tradeoff can save the bill—and the party's future. The House’s passage of health-care reform is the clearest sign yet that the Democratic Party is, once again, for better and for worse, a big tent.
By essentially sacrificing abortion and immigrant rights to get conservative Democrats to vote for expanded health-care coverage, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi restored the old hierarchy that between the 1930s and the 1960s helped Democrats establish dominance on Capitol Hill. Today, to a degree we haven’t seen since then, the Democratic Party is about economic protection first, and cultural freedom second. The Dems' Smart Abortion Move Read the paragraph at least twice, let it sink in. He apparently is quite content that the tent is only opening to the right.
This part angered me more.
For cultural liberals, the health-care vote was ugly. They had better get used to it: Big parties are ugly. But if you want to rebuild the American welfare state, there is no alternative.
In these next two paragraphs he appears to be blaming Democrats' losses in the past for being culturally more liberal. Isn't that amazing? He is complimentary of the party that pushed through the social safety nets and work programs under FDR. Yet he appears to blame the fact that they stood for culturally liberal issues for their losing. I had to read the second paragraph here a couple of times.
Yet it was that big, ugly Democratic Party that from Franklin Roosevelt to Lyndon Johnson pushed through Social Security, the Wagner Act, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Tennessee Valley Authority, Food Stamps, Head Start, Medicare and Medicaid (with occasional help from the then-extant progressive wing of the GOP). Some of the Democratic bigots opposed these economic reforms, to be sure. But others backed them; they genuinely wanted to curb the savagery and chaos of unfettered capitalism. They just wanted to preserve white, male supremacy too.
This was the devil’s pact that defined the Democratic Party for more than three decades, until the civil rights and women’s movement forced party leaders to choose. They reluctantly chose racial and gender equality, and so the racists and the misogynists drifted away. The Democratic Party became culturally liberal: pro-affirmative action, pro-choice, and smaller, since the old racists and sexists, now repackaged as racial and sexual conservatives, flocked to the GOP. Starting in 1968, Democrats began consistently losing the presidency. And in 1994, the realignment finally trickled down to the House of Representatives, and the Democrats lost that, too.
I thought he was just about ready to praise a culturally liberal party, then I read this.
So Democrats accommodated themselves to a different kind of devil’s pact. Ideologically, the party was now more pure. But politically, it lacked the power to carry on FDR and LBJ’s work, or even preserve their gains. In the 1970s and 1980s, the liberals who ran the national party imposed a series of litmus tests that alienated cultural conservatives, even those who might have supported greater regulation of the market and greater protections for the poor. And, in so doing, they kept the tent small—small but comfortable, almost pristine.
Let's be clear. Women's rights and gay rights are not to be called "litmus tests." They are to be assumed to be the right stand, and they are not to be used as scapegoats to win.
I find it amazing to follow his twists and turns in reasoning. The Democrats..an "almost pristine" party? "Small but comfortable"?
It is as though he is saying the party was losing its majority because it became socially liberal.
The American Prospect blog differs with him on some parts. Not as much as I differ, but some of it.
This blogger says we really have to be careful about the compromises we make. That you had better keep track of what you leave behind.
How Majorities Die: Why Peter Beinart is Wrong About Stupak.Ultimately, he fails to understand that every majority contains the seeds of its own undoing. While Peter focuses on the economic aspects of the previous big-tent Democratic majority, he downplays the advances made on civil rights and gender equality, especially by LBJ. As Peter recognizes, the Civil Rights Act and other culturally progressive victories led to the Democratic majority's defeat as racists and social conservatives fled to the Republican party. He suggests that this was a result of a decision for the party to become more "pure" under pressure from activists, but that's foolish. It was because the party decided to do the right thing under pressure from activists. Does Peter think this was a bad decision? He doesn't say.
Believers in the Big Tent, like Peter and myself, have to be very careful about the compromises they make. If you lose track of what the point of politics is -- what you leave behind -- then you risk betraying the entire progressive agenda. If Peter thinks today's progressives should choose economic issues over other ones, he should make that case explicitly. But he shouldn't pretend that it's a normatively good choice.
I really applaud this from the TAPPED blogger.
There's going to come a time when this Democratic majority has the chance to do something so big and important that it will destroy itself by alienating its conservative and moderate members. Maybe it will be gay marriage, maybe it will be the Freedom of Choice Act, who knows. I hope the leadership at the time has the principles and the guts to pass the law and blow up their majority. That's what it's there for, after all.
For decades there has been this nagging little feeling among Democratic leaders that being progressive or liberal is something for which they need to be apologetic.
I have watched this idiotic Stupak amendment cause a huge wave of resentment very suddenly. Strong enough to catch the leadership off guard, yet not enough to make them back down yet.
Our party leaders are fearful to define the message, yet when they do...when they take strong stands the enthusiasm is there and the activists get busy.
Democrats haven't yet recognized that progressivism isn't something to apologize for or to run against. Despite polling that shows "liberalism" to be lagging behind "moderates" and "conservatism" in terms of broad stroke ideology, when asked about individual issues, Americans are absolutely center-left. We're mostly in favor of a woman's right to choose. We're mostly in favor of government involvement in health care and the public option. We're in favor of regulating how guns are sold. We're in favor of a separation of church and state. We're in favor of socialized programs like Medicare, Social Security, SCHIP and Medicaid. We're increasingly embracing same-sex marriage and LGBT equality. Democrats even have a record of fiscal responsibility that far exceeds that of Republicans (compare the Clinton surplus with the record Bush deficits). It's really just the word "liberal" that's been stigmatized over the years, not the positions themselves.
...For the longest time, Democratic politics was based upon merely reacting to Republican attacks by capitulating and moving to the middle in order to disarm those attacks.
Only when the Democrats seize the political initiative while also standing their ideological ground have they enjoyed victories like 2006 and 2008.
Recipe for failure There was no excuse for the party leaders to fail to take a stand in Maine on the anti-gay amendment. There is no excuse to them to allow the religious right to get such a huge voice in the health care reform.
Time for the firm stands.
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