What the conservative movement is getting right

I'm not saying that the "Tea Party" movement is the right way to do it, or that any of their claims are valid, but certainly the left appeared disconnected from reality when they made light of what happened with the recent elections in New York's 23rd district and counted it as good for leftists. Sure, it was a minor victory for the Democratic Party that was notable for its nearly unprecedented nature (the congressional seat was held more recently by the Whig Party than a Democrat). And it was fun watching Rachel Maddow report on Dede Scozzafava's last name becoming a verb. Yet the events of the last few years, with President Obama in the White House and Democrats in control of both houses of Congress, for all of their symbolic significance, have produced little in the way of tangible, substantial results. Looking at what has happened with the debate over health insurance reform, for example, leads one to question whether what is good for the Democratic Party is indeed good for the left at all.

The health insurance reform debate has proven that progressives are a nearly powerless minority in Congress, regardless of the fact that Democrats hold a strong majority. This proof can be found easily in the latest version of the "reform" bill currently being peddled by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV). Far from what any true progressive desires, this bill is more than a simple compromise. Compared to what could have been, it's a true disaster. The number of compromises conceded to the right wing surely outnumber the aspects of the bill that actually please the left. The public option has been deformed so much that it fails to even serve its original purpose of providing competition for the private sector. Analysis by the Congressional Budget Office projects that indeed, premiums for the public option will be even higher than premiums for private plans. This is of course because as a major concession to conservative Democrats (no, they're not moderate), premiums for the public option will be negotiated with providers rather than tied to Medicare rates + 5%. In addition to this, the CBO estimates that at most the public option could potentially cover six million people (a mere fraction of the uninsured, the rest of which would be forced to buy insurance from the private sector, but more on that later). Even more troubling is that those same conservative Democrats will likely vote no when the final bill comes up for passage anyway, so why include language to appease them while ignoring the wishes of those who actually plan to vote yes? The individual mandate to buy health insurance is a terrible idea when the rest of the "reform" isn't enough to actually bring down health insurance premiums in the first place. It's essentially a blatant giveaway to the health insurance industry. Then there is the anti-trust exemption for health insurance companies, which the Senate bill also fails to eliminate. Remember all the hubbub over that just a few weeks back? Well, the Senate already "forgot." Or maybe the insurance industry just got a tighter grip around the necks of Democrats in the Senate. The infamous Stupak amendment that plagues the House's version of "reform," seriously restricting abortion rights, shouldn't go unmentioned either, but it has received more than enough coverage throughout the media. In exchange for all of the compromises and concessions to the right wing, progressives get absolutely nothing. Thus, it is misleading to say that this is all just a matter of typical political compromise, as anything less than a single payer system is a massive compromise in the first place. The great compromise was silently made the minute President Obama started talking about a public option, rather than single payer, on the campaign trail and then later from the White House. This was Obama's greatest misstep regarding the issue of health care, the biggest policy initiative of his presidency's first year.

All of this is to say that maybe the conservatives are onto something by being independent enough to at least disown the Republican Party when they see fit. They haven't been afraid to do so since being reduced to a minority in Congress and kicked out of the White House. Perhaps that's just it and it's really just a condition of being in the minority, but something tells me it's deeper than that. If the left had an equivalent of the "Tea Party" movement currently, I seriously doubt that what Congress is touting as health insurance "reform" would fly. Democratic politicians would get the message that their constituents are simply unhappy with a lukewarm variation of the status quo, practically molded after the wishes of health insurance industry lobbyists. The corporate-funded "Tea Party" movement is nothing if it's not full of dangerous and destructive ideas that should be rejected by any forward-thinking person. But it also carries a valuable lesson to learn for progressives. Sometimes the largest obstacle to democracy and progress is not the Republican Party, but the two-party system in general.