The Politics of the Possible

So just today Max Baucus' finance comittee's health care reform plan is out. It's as disappointing as I expected it to be. It includes no public insurance option. The centerpiece of the Baucus plan is a tax on the most expensive insurance plans. It's hard to tell from the kos coverage or the Times article, but basically I think the government will guarantee premium payments to insurance companies for low-income Americans. Under the Baucus plan health insurance will be extended to more people, and it will be regulated slightly more than it is now, imposing caps on deductibles and co-payments. This bill looks exactly like the industry windfall I was afraid it would be. We'll get slightly more people covered, under slightly tighter regulation, at a massive increase in cost.

It's hard to tell where Obama stands on all of this right now. Lately he's been doing head-fakes, preferring to talk about how the current system is broken as opposed to how he'd like to fix it. I mentioned how disappointed I am with Obama, and I'm not alone. But then I listened to this audio essay, which I highly recommend. Go listen to it. Bill Reznik provides a little perspective on just how entrenched corporate interests have become in this country.

Paul Krugman points out the same thing and he wishes he had Nixon to negotiate with instead of Chuck Grassley. The fact is that over the last 30 years America has been a corporacy. No politician can stay in power or advance any agenda without first gathering support from powerful corporations. We've come to think of wealthy lobbyists handing millions of dollars directly to politicians as normal instead of the rank bribery that it is. The power of the people to affect change through elections is almost completely buried beneath the power of corporate campaign contributions.

In any event, Krugman and Reznik have given me a little perspective. It may not be possible for Obama to pursue an openly progressive agenda, to actually do things right away that really help people like guarantee the right to health care. But that doesn't mean that progressives can give him a break. If we're to win "years of siege warfare against deeply entrenched interests, defending a deeply dysfunctional political system" as Krugman puts it, we'll have to push hard at every opportunity.

What do you think? Has Obama given in to a Clintonite mindset, triangulating and giving up before he starts? Or is he deftly positioning himself for as much reform as he can possibly get, given the state of the American corporacy? Let me know in the comments.