Back in August, the right came out in force with their disruption of civil discourse at town hall meetings and Fox sponsored Tea Bagging events. At the time, people were concerned that team Obama had not come out hard enough on the specifics of health care and against its critics.
Looking back now you can see how smart it has been to keep their hand hidden close to their chest and work the system mostly behind the scenes. A basic rule of Poker is not to reveal your hand too early otherwise you could be drawn into a big pot that you never had a chance of winning. The right went crazy early in the process, showing its hand too soon and slowly, patiently they have been picked apart by the progressive left and, even more importantly, by the impartial fact checkers like Politifact.com.
The truth about health care is that it is big, really BIG. And it is complicated, really COMPLICATED. There are no easy sound bite slogans that appeal to everyone. So our normal 30-second attention span satiated by cable news just does work with the health care issue. It takes time to understand. The understanding comes from more involved research and more involved discussions. Discussions that are taking place on NPR, in magazines and newspapers and sometime in civil town hall meetings.
Where we are now is a more enlightened place in the debate. We now get that the system is unfair, we now get that anyone of of us could be denied coverage at any time, we now get that we could lose our home - saving and go bankrupt with a single illness even if we have coverage now. We also understand, that some other countries have better systems (even if many of us will not admit it). We totally get that competition, not monopolies, keep prices low and innovation high... that is why a public option is so popular right now.
So after the Right's screaming temper tantrum of lies in August
, we stand on the cusp of doing something great. Not the single payer system I wanted, but a compromise that will sharply turn us in the correct direction on health care. One that says it is a right, not a privilege and one that saves my children from going bankrupt just because they get sick in the richest country in the World.
