The Coming Battle for Healthcare

Paul Krugman’s column this morning brings a dose of reality to the heady moment the Democratic race has now entered. His trip back to the early days of the first Clinton Administration reminds us of what happens to Democratic Presidents once the right wing turns on the attack machine. His warning focuses most clearly on healthcare as make-or-break for any Democrat who really wants to make change from the White House:

I have colleagues who tell me that Mr. Obama’s
rejection of health insurance mandates — which
are an essential element of any workable plan
for universal coverage — doesn’t really matter,
because by the time health care reform gets
through Congress it will be very different from
the president’s initial proposal anyway. But this
misses the lesson of the Clinton failure: if the
next president doesn’t arrive with a plan that is
broadly workable in outline, by the time the
thing gets fixed the window of opportunity may
well have passed.

My sense is that the fight for the Democratic
nomination has gotten terribly off track...

What the Democrats should do is get back to
talking about issues … and about who is best
prepared to push their agenda forward.
Otherwise, even if a Democrat wins the general
election, it will be 1992 all over again. And that
would be a bad thing.

It’s not too late for a surging Obama to pledge a concerted effort to bring a consensus Democratic healthcare plan to the Congress in 2009, with input from his rivals and from his new supporter, Ted Kennedy. None of them will make the mistake of bringing a plan to legislators without mandated participation and Obama could look like a statesman for listening to his colleagues, breaking with the “old politics” of always being right.

Krugman is correct that any Democratic healthcare plan will have just one shot at success. Billions in insurance money will be spent to defeat universal coverage, even as the right wing demonizes the President who proposes it. Having healthcare ready to go will be job one of a Democratic 100 days and anyone who thinks it will be an easy sell is smoking something.

See Memeorandum for discussion