on NPR Obama defends health reform bill as historic

President Barack Obama, in an interview with NPR, pushed back against those on the left who complain that the health care bill about to be voted by the Senate is fatally flawed because it lacks a government insurance plan - a "public option". It is the biggest reform since Medicare, perhaps Social Security, says the President, slipping uncharacteristically into hyperbole. The transcript is HERE.

I agree with Paul Waldman of the American Prospect. Although it is galling to be forced by the likes of Joseph Lieberman and the cloture rule to take a big bite out of what a majority is ready to embrace, Waldman explains:

For all its weaknesses, even the Senate's version of health reform, which would hopefully move more in the direction of the House's version when the two are merged in conference, contains an extraordinary number of beneficial features. (You can find an excellent summary of both bills here, from the Kaiser Family Foundation.)

It insures over 30 million more people.

It expands Medicaid coverage.

It outlaws denials for pre-existing conditions, rescission, gender discrimination in premiums, and both annual and lifetime coverage caps.

It provides hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies for low- and middle-income people to buy insurance.

It makes it so if you lose your job, you don't lose your health insurance.

It forces insurers to allow people as old as 26 to stay on their parents' policies.

It establishes dozens of pilot programs to test new ways of saving money and improving care. All of these provisions, and many others, will substantially improve people's lives.

And the insurance exchange puts in place the structure through which further improvements can be made in the years ahead.

One year to the Mid-Term Elections

It is time to look forward to the mid-term elections. My first was 1982 (before that I was too much the anti-war activist to be involved in electoral politics). I was on Bob Torricelli's issues committee. Unemployment was surging and in working class south Bergen County all we really had to say (and did on thousands of leaflets) was "If you don't vote Democratic they won't get the message". They did and it was a good year for Democrats.

The problem for Democrats now is unnervingly familiar. As a lawyer I remember most fondly my occasional smashing victories. But the reality is that most of the time we were building toward the best available compromise. It was always a hard sell. Politics is that art.

The gap between the message of `Yes we can!' HOPE and the slow slog of Obama's centrism and the persistence of high unemployment feeds skepticism about politics; and anti-tax sentiment (`I need cash') moves back toward ascendancy.

The danger of the current moment for progressives is this: the party in the White House and the majority in Congress ALWAYS loses strength in mid-term elections. 60 votes in the Senate are not really there (making Lieberman and the Blue Dogs king makers). With the bitter pill of compromise on the table progressives will be less motivated. The Right - buoyed by the inevitable loss of air in the 2008 election balloon - will be motivated because their oppositionist stance has freed them from the need to compromise. They can run totally negative, as the infelicitous Chris Christie showed in his New Jersey victory over the competent but hamstrung Jon Corzine.

So I come out for more boldness on the part of the President and the Democratic Party. The success of his Presidency depends on it. And requires a focus on things that can be felt sooner rather than later. For that I turn it over to Paul Starr, the groundbreaking author of The Social Transformation of American Medicine.

The founder and Co-Editor of the American Prospect concludes his December column Faster Please:

According to research by the political scientist Larry Bartels, presidents running for re-election have benefited when economic growth occurred late in their terms rather than at the start.

Democrats running in 2010 have no such consolation, however, and if they lose effective control of Congress, much of the promise of Obama’s presidency may be lost too. A little presidential impatience now would be a good stimulus in itself.