Bill's Focus

Asking for a friend

Democrats are lost in a fog

In the comments section of today’s Heather Cox Richardson’s “Letters from an American” a person named Kathy (an astute regular on that Substack) suggested the following:
”I get your point, I think mixed economies work best.”

My brain exploded with agreement. And then as the dust settled, it came to me.

Democrats are finally drawing a line in the sand and the issue is the unaffordability of healthcare. For over 20 million Americans in the health insurance market, premiums are about to become impossible to pay or at a minimum cripple spending on other items like food, rent, utilities – forget fun stuff.

My emotional yet totally logical response to Kathy:

Indeed. Finland. Very high taxes. Very strong social services system. Thriving private enterprise. Happiest people on the planet.

It is not rocket science.

Capitalism is designed to develop businesses to create and distribute products and services. When regulated for concerns for the environment, workers rights and monopolies…it can perform beautifully.

Socialism is designed to do what Lincoln referenced: “Do for the people what they can’t do for themselves.” Socialism is simply thinking like a village of old (a nice one). When someone’s barn burns down, they rebuild it. When a mother is ill, other mothers help. When the main breadwinner is hurt in an accident, neighbors bring food and help pay the doc.

It’s so fracking simple and logical …. it defies reason and compassion that we won’t, we refuse to learn from the obvious successes of other older countries.

And so. Now is the time for Democrats to stake out the logical, loving, compassionate – COST EFFICIENT – effective and well tested program called Medicare for ALL.

Republicans went way, way, way, WAY extremely right and libertarian, “every man for himself”, “pull yourself up by your bootstraps even if you don’t have any boots, sorry, your fault, you must be lazy or non-white”. Women’s reproductive health in the waste bin. Hospitals closing. Docs and nurses burning out. ER waits escalating. Have you been to one lately? Don’t.

And we Democrats hover around in this fuzzy middle ground afraid to be too extreme. Dithering, delaying, clutching our pearls, afraid to offend the “moderates”. BTW, moderates use the ER, too.

Holy shite. What will it take?

People whine about the “extremism on both sides”. Bullcrap. Places like Finland are right down the middle, sensible and frankly a lot more efficient at taking care of each other. And why isn’t that the banner, the central platform, the MESSAGE?

Why don’t Democrats simply lay it out there. Capitalism without the balance of regulation and without worker involvement is feudalism. Socialism without democracy (like China) is slavery.

It is not rocket science. Every other major developed country provides their citizens with some form of universal health care. There are flaws in every one of those programs. We think we are smarter than every other country. Certainly we could harvest all the best aspects of those programs and create the best health plan ever imagined. Because we are exceptional, right?

Health care is a human right! Especially in the richest nation to have ever existed. To deny this is immoral and frankly stupidly inefficient. Unless, of course, we think the ER is a good health care plan.

Universal healthcare is the platform to win on. If we had the guts to adopt it. Here is a billboard:

“Please name the person you know who should die early in America because she couldn’t afford a doctor.”

or

“Thune and Schumer have healthcare – the best available. How’s yours? Are they really more valuable and important than your family?”

THE BIG LESSON:
A minority of EXTREME Republicans have taken over this nation. We, the vast MAJORITY, have let it happen because we didn’t offer a clear alternative.

That alternative is sitting on a shelf. We simply won’t grab it and run with it. Bernie is testing it all across the country. Red state citizens are applauding him.

We could simply copy the following speech and put our names on it.

Bernie suggests that a single state take the lead. Interesting. How about it, Gavin?