On Scott Brown, Health Care Reform, etc.: Is Obama a leftist?
Glenn Greenwald over at Salon is a little tired of the left being blamed for the hopefully impending failure of Obamacare. And he's right. As he notes, the left did not get single payer, then did not get the public option, then did not get Medicare expansion. Now, of course, I'm far from on the same page as Greenwald when it comes to what we should do with health care. But so is Obama, or at least the Obamacare plan, and much else happening under the auspices of the Obama administration.
I was thinking earlier today about the meeting between Obama and Joe the Plumber and Obama's "spread the wealth" comment. At the time, a lot of people, including me, mistakenly thought this made Obama a socialist. But the first year of the Obama administration has made it clear that what concerns Obama is not how wealth is distributed, but who distributes it. Likewise, what concerns Obama with regards to power is not how it is used, but who has it. For this reason, it is logical that Obama would become a corporatist. Getting the workers of the world, or at least the United States, to throw off their chains and seize the government to enforce social justice is highly improbable. But getting big business to shed beliefs never held about unfettered capitalism and seize the government to enforce their oligopolies... that was already in process.
If Obama's first priority were making sure no one goes without healthcare, we would not be looking at the bill we have now. But Obama's first priority was not universal health access - it was the power and prestige that would come with the government taking over healthcare. After TARP, the auto bailouts, the Chrysler cramdown and more, it was second nature for this administration and this Congress to think that divvying up money and markets between companies that played ball and shutting out those that didn't was the same thing as fixing healthcare. For them it is.
There's only one problem in the mix: When the political parties cease to exist to represent ideas and come to represent constituencies and interest only, eventually it becomes too much to ask some people to take one for the team as they realize it's not their team anymore. It's tempting to gloat that the left was a bunch of suckers for Obama and the Democrats he brought with him into power, but the truth is we all were. Even those of us who worried the most about him thought that he was a closet socialist who would try to nationalize the economy. But since he and Axelrod - or at least Axelrod - were focused on power, not justice (however idiotic or misconstrued the definition of that justice might be), what we have instead is a game in which politicians distribute the economy to those who give money to politicians, the better to reinforce the political power of the first group and the economic power of the second. It looks, though, like America is waking up to this.
If Obama really were a socialist and health care reform really was about the transition to single-payer, Massachussetts might have elected Coakley. But they saw, I think, that health care reform, like so much else, was really just about seeing what part of our economy the Democrats could auction off next to fuel their drive for power. So Greenwald's right; the problem today is not that Obama's too far left, but that he's selling the country to the highest bidders, not ideas for change to the people.
