Reviewing President Rahm Emanuel's Health Care Speech

Not to be too much of a
downer, but I found Obama's speech tonight a big O-bummer. Really,
other than his very important reminder that "we're all in this
together," it was disappointing (although that's probably not the right
word, because it implies I expected something more). And remember,
while I have at times been critical of Obama, I've been very supportive
of him on health care...up until tonight. Here's a list of my basic
problems:

- Why do Republican presidents and politicians never bash "The
Right," but President Obama uses a joint session speech to bash "The
Left?"

- Obama felt the need to tell the country that he's devoted to
making sure the wildly unpopular private insurance industry at the
heart of the health care meltdown remains profitable. He also made sure
to forget that Americans love Medicare and hate private insurance when
he went out of his way to reiterate his support for "market" economics
(shocker - this was the line both parties stood up and gave a
thundering round of applause). Awesome.

- Completely unclear why Obama promised to "call out lies," and then proceeded to embrace the Right's most dishonest narrative
about tort reform being a major vehicle to fix health care (not
surprisingly, the "don't negotiate with legislative terrorists" lesson
was reinforced when the GOP response called Obama's bluff and pushed to
work with him on tort reform).

- The wavering on the public option would be hilarious if it wasn't
so serious. Really - his insistence that he supports it but might also
support removing it reminded me of a Saturday Night Live skit parodying
wavering and waffling Democrats. Obviously he just had to listen to
pundits insisting he must abandon the public option, when a huge majority
of Americans continue to support it, and he has a huge legislative
majority in Congress. He obviosuly just HAS to compromise on it
because...well...just because - and he certainly can't use
reconciliation like President Bush did because...well, again, just
because. And, of course, those of us who don't expect him to compromise
away an already compromised yet still wildly popular public option are
obviously on the radical fringe regardless of polling data. Obviously!

- Though he didn't draw a direct equivalence, he implied there was
one between the progressive push for single payer and the
ultra-conservative push to destroy the entire health care system. Sick.

In sum, when you couple this with the speech's fawning praise for
lunatics like John McCain and Chuck Grassley and add to it the news
that the White House is holding closed-door compromise meetings with
corporate Democrats tomorrow, I felt like I was listening to a parsed
screed by President Rahm Emanuel, not a call to arms from the Barack
Obama who actually ran for president. There was lots of passionate talk
about the problem, and little courage to demand a serious solution.

I mean, I seem to remember an election just a few months ago that
resulted in a Democratic president, and huge Democratic majorities in
Congress - and I seem to remember there was a Barack Obama who only a
short while ago said geting those electoral results was the only obstacle
to a full-on single payer health care system, much less a weakened
public option. But again, I guess it's just too bad that after that
election, President Emanuel now rules America.