Yelling and carrying on like a bunch of racist lunatics will do it.
You would think that the tea-bagging birthers on the Right might have learned something from the Left on this. Screaming and carrying on about the Iraq War changed nobody's mind. Politicians, like most adults, respond to polite and well-reasoned arguments that are buttressed by facts.
However, when you scream at them and yell imprecations and make loud comments that show that you are unhinged from reality, well, you're going to lose, big time. Screaming and yelling may make you feel better, but that is about as far as it goes.
I will bet that 95% of the politicians being confronted this month by the screaming tea-baggers against health will not be swayed. If anything, their resolve to support health care reform may have been stiffened.
UPDATE: Shit like this will not help the opponents.
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5 comments:
Preach it, sistah! Screaming and shouting might work when dealing with something like, say, Social Security privatization, where the majority of Americans don't want it and where there's good reasoned arguments against it. But shouting a bunch of lies and nonsense at Congressmen just irritates the shit out of them, it doesn't change their mind.
- Badtux the Healthcare Penguin
And a significant portion of those 95% are going to learn the hard way in 2010 that a lot of those people screaming were their constituents legitimately incensed that their voices are being ignored.
I don't buy the argument that the outrage is 100% Republican engineered. You have some rightfully aggrieved people out there, and their representatives will ignore them at their peril.
The Democrats want to pass the bill before anyone reads it, and the Republicans encourage people to shout down their elected reps.
We're frickin' doomed, no matter which side of the debate we're on.
Ambulance Driver, the bill is not long and is not particularly complicated, it has very wide margins and is double-spaced. I have a modest background in the legal regulatory framework for health care (I've been writing about healthcare on my blog for about four years now), and with that modest background it took me approximately two hours to read it. Much of that time was spent cross-referencing references to other part of the CFR to find out, e.g., what the meaning of "individual" vs. "small group" and "large group" coverage were, and which were covered under ERISA and which were currently state-regulated under McCarran-Ferguson. You're familiar with the regulatory framework of the health industry so it shouldn't take you much longer. For those not familiar with the regulatory framework of the health insurance industry it might take you a day or two to read up on what all these acronyms mean, but it's otherwise not a hard read -- it is, for the most part, clear legal language that can only be interpreted one way by anybody familiar with clear legal language.
By and large it is a moderate patch on the current system, not some sort of socialist medicine like the right wing talking points say. The insurance companies hate it because it will force them to provide the care that we've paid them for, rather than being able to wriggle out via loopholes and arbitrary denials and artificial limits that we as individuals have no power to negotiate, but it doesn't do anything horrible, despite the talking points to the contrary.
It doesn't do everything I'd like it to do -- it doesn't fix the costs problem, for example -- but if George W. Bush had proposed this bill, I see nothing in it that Republicans would have objected to (with the exception of those who were in the pocket of health insurance companies but that's always the case). The current objections are completely based on politics, not on the contents of the bill, which are nothing extremist and look somewhat like a mix between the Swiss and Dutch approaches which preserve significant free market elements in the health insurance marketplace. And furthermore, polls show that the majority of Americans support the goals of the bill, and, indeed, even the methods the bill uses. See, for example, the July Kaiser Family Foundation poll. 67% of Americans, for example, support the individual mandate with government assistance for those who cannot purchase insurance on their own, and 64% of Americans support an employer mandate that employers either provide insurance or pay into an insurance pool. 59% of Americans support the "public option" to compete with private. That's exactly what is in the bill.
In short, looking at those poll numbers, any politician who lets a few disgruntled die-hards stop him from voting for HR3200 is too stupid to be re-elected. When 60%+ of the American public agrees with the major components of the bill, it is clear that the only arguments the right wing really have are anti-democratic ones that attempt to overthrow democracy via lies, threats of violence and manufactured outrage.
- Badtux the Healthcare Penguin
My guess is, AD, that most of the people turning out to yell about "socialism" and "this is not the America I grew up in" and "death panels" didn't vote for Democrats.
Obama has done some things with regard to health insurance reform that I disagree with, but one thing I do agree with is his timing. In 14 months, this may not matter very much, not if the economy is turning around.
As far as I can see, the current system is manifestly unfair and corrupt. Something has to be done to try to fix it. I give the Democrats a lot of credit for trying to do something and I really dislike the Republicans for being the party of "no." Not the party of "no, but" or "no, we have a better idea", but just "no."
The Republicans are to health care what Yasir Arafat was to peace in the Middle East.
It isn't the ones whose mind is made up that I worry about. It's the fence sitters who are looking which way to lean I'm concerned with. My Representative, Bart Gordon is one of those. We have exchanged several emails; Bart and I, and after he sent his "I cannot support a single-payer private option bill in any form" and "I will continue to work with my fellow Democrat and REPUBLICAN colleagues" email we are way past the "Thank you for your reply/concerns" niceties . He plans on holding one "town hall" meeting and several days of face to face sit downs with his constituency. Though I'm not worried about the face to face meetings there are many knuckle-dragging mouth breathers here in Tennessee(ie B.R. Cyrus style) that are perfect cannon fodder for the Rethuglican "Mob" parties. With the local news media carrying video of the shouters that are against reform espousing the fear that is the Republican modus operandi, I wonder just how many Congress people are looking for an easy way out to say "My constituents didn't want Health Care reform" and they can continue receiving their Big Insurance/Health/Pharma "subsidies" they've been stuffing their private coffers with. Where I live Health Care Reform with a public option is looking very bleak! Never Underestimate The Ignorance Of The American Public!
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