Matt Taibbi, writing at True Slant, lays out the healthcare conundrum in pretty clear terms.

I’ve been getting phone calls from some folks in DC with some ugly stories about how the Democrats have systematically sandbagged the progressive opposition, with the White House pulling strings and levering the funding for various nonprofit groups in order to prevent them from airing ads attacking the insurance and pharmaceutical industries. I suspect in the end this is going to be the main story of the health care reform effort, how the Democrats (and some progressive groups) sold out their constituents in exchange for financial contributions from the relevant industries.

We’re reaching a head on what will happen on healthcare. Either the White House and leadership will put pressure on the Senate conserva-Dems who oppose a public health insurance option and get them to accept it, or the White House and leadership will put pressure on House progressives who have pledged to not vote for any bill that does not include a public option.  If the pressure falls on the House, then Taibbi’s take on Dems will at least in part be correct.  Adjudicating the extent to which he is right would depend on an assessment of whether, as he says, these Democrats are politically craven or if they just don’t believe the same things as their base…or the 2008 Obama campaign.

Jake McIntyre at Daily Kos has a very important post that should help shape how we as a country think of Ted Kennedy’s memory and how we seek to honor his life’s work in coming days and years. The emphasis should be on passing legislation on the three areas Kennedy most championed over his career, the Teddy Trilogy: healthcare, labor, and immigration. McIntyre says it is not possible to honor Kennedy and oppose universal healthcare, giving all Americans the right to organize in their workplace, and pass comprehensive immigration reform that is just and fair.

More importantly, I like McIntyre’s take on framing how we must have a political memory of Ted Kennedy. He was a true liberal leader and he must be honored as such; his memory cannot be sanitized by Republicans seeking to diminish the political philosophy he fought tirelessly for until his final day.

When Paul Wellstone died they told us that we couldn’t celebrate him him as a political actor, that to do so would be crass and opportunistic. But the entire reason we knew Paul Wellstone, the reason we were crushed by his passing, was his political activism. It would have been a lie not to celebrate that legacy. It would have been crass to act as if Paul Wellstone hadn’t been first and foremost a progressive hero, to feign nonchalance over political concerns as we eulogized the man, and in so doing stripping him of his essence. Likewise, it would be a lie today to pretend that the reason we loved Ted Kennedy had nothing to do with his leadership for working people. And it would be crass to attempt to celebrate him with mere words, rather than the action he demanded from us in life. How can we not “politicize” his legacy? The man was who he was because of his wholehearted commitment to his politics. The real obscenity — the real opportunism — would be for his political opponents to now try and depoliticize a quintessentially political life.

This is actually reminiscent of a line from Senator Patrick Leahy’s statement yesterday on Kennedy’s death.

The powerful have never lacked champions. Ted Kennedy was a champion for ordinary Americans and for those who struggle. He believed everyone in this great land deserves the opportunity to pursue the American Dream.

Kennedy’s greatness was in no small driven by his moral commitment to helping those who were without privilege, without defender. That he came from one of America’s most successful families only underscores his commitment to public service to help preserve the American Dream for everyone. His life-long pursuit of service in honor of those who had less than him, even after his family had paid in blood three brothers to that cause, is a testament to his commitment to his beliefs.

Members of Congress, especially Democratic ones, need to honor Ted Kennedy’s lifetime of service by pressing forward with truly progressive legislation in the areas of healthcare, labor, and immigration. We need healthcare reform that includes major regulation of the insurance industry and Kennedy Insurance (formerly known as the public option). We need to pass the Employee Free Choice Act, so America’s workers can come together to make their lives better. And we need comprehensive immigration reform that will ensure our country continues to be a melting pot for people who seek to realize the American Dream and work to have a better future. These are all goals that speak to the beliefs, efforts, and principles that defined Ted Kennedy’s life. To pursue these is to honor Senator Kennedy. But to fail to achieve these is to do disservice to his memory.

Hunter brings the shrill:

Thank goodness we’ve kept our powder dry, that’s all I’ve got to say. Thank goodness we didn’t make a big deal over warrantless wiretapping, corporate immunity, the politicization of the Department of Justice, the Blackwater murders, torture, extraordinary rendition, fraudulent rewriting of scientific reports, or blanket false public statements in an effort to sell the nation on a ruinous war — all so we could store up enough political capital for this moment. Thank goodness we didn’t sully ourselves with indictments or investigations; thank goodness we’ve kept the camaraderie of the Senate intact and not flown off, willy-nilly, and gotten angry with Senators who claim we are instituting “Death Panels” to weed out veterans and the elderly, or pushed too hard when members of the past administration flatly denied the ability of the Congress to so much as require their presence for questioning. Thank goodness we have not pressed to hard on whether Abu Ghraib abuses resulted from explicit direction of the highest figures in the Department of Defense, and that when we found out the waterboarding of a prisoner in order to come up with supposed “links” between Iraq and Al Qaeda was suggested specifically by the office of the Vice President, we knew well enough to let bygones be bygones, because we knew we would not want to expend our political capital on such trivial matters, when we were about to take on one of the most urgent domestic issues facing the nation.

Now, if we play our cards right, and with the help of our 60-seat Senate majority, we can boldly reinvigorate the collapsed American healthcare system by passing a “reform” bill that mandates everyone in America purchase underregulated products of record-profitable insurance companies that have proven unable to provide basic services to millions of Americans or even perform competent administration of their own products, but which provides only token efforts at reining in the worst of the worst abuses of the public by those companies. We need not provide any measure of “socialized” insurance, as most of the rest of the civilized world does. And we need not particularly worry about the poor and uninsured, because this is a recession, and it wouldn’t be cost effective.

I think we should count ourselves lucky that the Democrats have sat motionless with their thumbs up their asses for the last decade in order to steadfastly prepare themselves for this day.

As Hunter goes on to point out, there is still value in Democrats keeping the powder dry even longer. Obama’s political capital, after all, could be used by another incredibly important (but yet to be decided) issue down the line. Granted, it won’t be comprehensive immigration reform, ending the wars in Afghanistan or Iraq, putting through public financing for all federal elections or  universal access to high-speed internet connections…but it will certainly be big.

It’s situations like this one that make me profoundly question my long term commitment to staying in politics. If we can’t get our party to act with conviction in a fight like healthcare, what  can we ever expect them to do correctly?

Over at Open Left, Chris Bowers lays out the system through which progressive Democrats in Congress are being squeezed by Democratic elites out of support for the public option in healthcare reform. Bowers’ understanding of the forces at play is about as comprehensive as any written analysis of legislative wrangling I’ve seen on this issue. Sadly, the path we are headed on doesn’t seem to favor the progressive block holding together and thus the public option and a high-quality piece of reform legislation does not seem very likely.

I was at Netroots Nation this past week (hence the lack of posting). On Thursday night President Bill Clinton spoke to the gathering. One of his strongest points was that change takes time; he views progress in government policies and legislation as the work of decades and does not think using political power to expedite the process or help more people sooner is advisable. As such, he advocated that the progressive online community stop criticizing Obama and Democrats for their work on healthcare reform, even if it ends up not being exactly what we’d like to see. Clinton urged the outright celebration of anything being passed, regardless of its content. This sort of attitude, Clinton proposed, would enable Obama to retain political strength and help Democrats electorally, thereby ensuring the continued opportunity to achieve more meaningful reform.

I’ve had many conversations with political friends – operatives, activists, and bloggers – that have included defenses of doing something regardless of its quality. The argument often goes, “Well what if we can’t get the public option or strong affordability or employer responsibility, but we can get a piece of legislation that will cover 15 or 20 million more Americans than today. Can we not help those people because the bill wasn’t what we really wanted?” This is, at best, an only marginally persuasive argument. The reason we may not be able to do more is a political one – we lack the votes to achieve everything liberal Democrats want to achieve. And passing reform now is likely to preclude us from pursuing healthcare reform again in the Obama administration. After all, he is going to take anything that passes, call it “landmark reform” and not touch the issue again — how could he after running for reelection on his “landmark reform” of healthcare? Thus, further reform of healthcare will be forestalled for at least another eight years when we can only hope the political climate will be better suited for liberal reforms.

What happens next in this fight is going to be a question of what the President and leaders of the Democratic Party believe. Are they willing to lead now to get the best possible reform today and not delay meaningful change for decades? Or will the President’s support for the public option, which has really become a stand-in for real progressive reform and not a solitary issue, be translated into fighting for it, as David Sirota asks on Twitter? These are questions that connect the political landscape to policy beliefs about what is best for the country. At a certain level, Obama must answer Clinton’s challenge. Will he lead to make sure change happens now, or will he pass the buck to future presidents and hope that the situation becomes so dire that the bunk Sarah Palin and Chuck Grassley spit out about death panels has no effect on the media nor the public.

Maybe reform will be easier in another fifteen or twenty years. Maybe there will be something marginally better than our current system, which may add some percentage of the uninsured to the rolls of the insured. But whatever reform comes out is almost certainly going to be a huge boon to the bottom lines of the health insurance industry, thereby making change down the line even less likely. Leadership may be hard, but the cost of not pursuing the most aggressive path for reform now is even more frightening. Hopefully complacency will not win out and what is possible is redefined through leadership, as opposed to being determinative of where leadership dare not go.