My constituents will abandon me. They say this plan smacks of socialism. They're afraid it will force them to lose their coverage. They are sure the president is going to destroy private industry.
Blue Dog Democrats and their copious vexations are widely known. More importantly, they're accepted as practical, as just another political reality.
When a politician says her constituents simply cannot get behind something, that sounds just about final. The rationale, of course, is that elected officials are there to represent their constituencies. If the voters in their districts threaten to abandon them at the polls, politicians have the right — and, some say, the duty — to respond.
But the fears of a small, change-averse political minority seem to have put the administration of national progress on hold. A coalition of conservative Democrats that prides itself on two major concerns — cutting government profligacy and increasing military spending (markedly contradictory goals) — has crept its way into the spotlight.
The main sticking point for the Blue Dogs in the hot-button debate over health care reform has been, until recently, their reluctance to embrace any legislation with a "public option," or a government-sponsored health insurance provider. Apart from the political right's insistence on "good, healthy debate" and the news media's inherent need to perpetuate it, there is little need to even dispute the merits of the public option: Dispassionate experts widely agree that it is the only way to significantly stem the constantly mounting surge in health insurance costs.
What has been holding the country back from acting on the clear need for reform? The nation has moved to the left in each of the past two election cycles, putting the Democrats in control of Congress in 2006 and then reinforcing that control in 2008 while also electing President Obama. A major part of those election cycles was the debate over health care reform.
But now the Blue Dogs, responsible for many of the Democrats' gains in Congress, are insisting on, well, inaction. One of their main priorities, according to Coalition Co-chair Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (D-S.D.), is not to move faster than the Senate. Essentially, the Blue Dogs are afraid of making a stir — afraid of seeming too progressive.
But an ABC News/Washington Post poll released yesterday proves that after a long, hot summer of protest, the nation is taking a deep breath and looking at the facts with a newly clear-eyed perspective. Fifty-seven percent in the poll now favor "having the government create a new health insurance plan to compete with private" insurers, the highest level of support since the beginning of the summer, when mudslinging began at congressional representatives' town hall meetings. Only 40 percent in the poll said they opposed a government-run plan.
Senate Democrats often say their magic number is 60. As the percentage of Americans hoping for a public option creeps back toward that number, it is time for the self-declared "center" to stop holding the rest of the country hostage to its own fears.
Politicians are subject to the voters who put them in office, yes. But there was a time when they were leaders, too, when they listened to reason and egalitarian values, when they considered themselves federal officials responsible for the betterment of the nation — not just their own re-election. As that nation articulates a need for change, these fence-sitters must listen.
