Behold the latest atrocity:
The typical voter may not pay much attention to partly platforms these days, but activists certainly do. And at the Democratic Party platform hearings held in Pittsburgh just over a week ago, advocates for health care reform made their presence felt, proposing--and obtaining--revisions to the platform proposed by Obama and the party. The final platform proposal, which the full party will consider in Denver next week, now states that "every American man, woman, and child [should] be guaranteed affordable, comprehensive health care. ... with everyone in and no one left out." The word "guarantee" didn't appear in the previous draft; that was the activists' doing. The phrase "everyone in and no one left out" is also significant: It's a slogan liberal health care activists frequently use, and they're hoping that its adoption signals that Obama is serious about reform.
But while supporters of these positions were pleased with their victories, they weren't entirely satisfied. And it wasn't simply because the platform fell short of endorsing government-run, single-payer health insurance, which is the option activists strongly favor.
The new script is that single payer activists are calling for a government run health care system. Does the government run Medicare? No? Then logically the government would not run Medicare for All. Medicare for All is just like Medicare except that it covers everyone. Anyone who says otherwise is lying. So we are going to have to start calling them on this everytime they pull this stunt. News media flunkies have to understand that telling this lie means an inbox filled with courteous corrections, that their house ombudsman will be hearing from us and that we are prepared to launch blogswarms to counter this disinformation.
We are not just activists, we are 91 members of the House of Representatives, the US Conference of Mayors, and a great deal more serious political muscle.
Courteous letters maybe sent to letters[@]tnr[.]com
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What Do You Expect from TNR
Under Andy Sullivan,* TNR helped kill healthcare reform under Clinton. It's shitty work on behalf of conservatives didn't start with the Iraq War.
* Alterman included this awesome review of Sullivan's "work" at TNR:
Of course, this didn't lead to Sullivan being drummed out of American discourse, since he's now joined the effort to finish off what's left of The Atlantic (which at least never claimed to be liberal, but it did once claim to have good journalism and published the seminal takedown of McCaughey at the time (and Fallows continues to do good work)).
"Do what you feel in your heart to be right -- for you'll be criticized anyway. You'll be damned if you do, and damned if you don't. " - Eleanor Roosevelt