RECORD EDITORIAL COLUMNIST
LET ME BE clear: America needs health care reform. Let me be clearer: I doubt it’s going to happen anytime soon.
It would be easy to blame Republicans and those Tea Party folks who are the Darjeelings of the right wing. From an organizational point of view, the groundswell support for the Tea Party movement is impressive. Yet, I don’t see them as an insurmountable obstacle to passing health care reform. Democrats have defeated themselves.
Recently, Rep. Bill Pascrell, D-Paterson, made headlines for an interview he gave to Politico, a political Web site. I remember a quote years ago given in regard to then-New York Cardinal John O’Connor’s freewheeling style before the media. It went something like this: When you shoot from the hip, you’re bound to spray a lot of people.
Pascrell has a lot in common with the late cardinal. Pascrell says what he thinks, often with little regard for whether it plays well with his critics. In the Politico interview, he made it crystal clear that he was unhappy with the direction that health care reform had taken in Congress and he was even less pleased with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s leadership on the issue.
He said: “We are arrogant when we say, ‘Well, as soon as the public understands what we’re doing, they’ll like it.’ That is not only arrogant, it’s BS.” It’s also a vintage Pascrell observation.
This week another New Jersey congressman, Frank Pallone, D-Monmouth, met with The Record’s editorial board. Pallone, as chairman of a powerful House subcommittee on health, has been knee-deep in the health care issue. He didn’t believe that the House and Senate versions of health care reform could be reconciled. He did not think a bill would be making its way to President Obama in the near future. However, Pallone had nothing but praise for Pelosi.
I’m not a fan of the speaker. If I were an image consultant for the Democratic Party, I would tell them that a rich, coiffed liberal from California isn’t a good point-person for a “Big Tent Party” unless the big tent party is on the lawn of an even bigger estate. Pelosi comes across too elite. But according to Pallone, if I knew Pelosi, like he knew Pelosi; oh, oh, oh, what a gal.
As I see it, it is about how America sees it – literally sees it. Democrats are being led by people who don’t look like they ever sweat, except for the president. And he only sweats when playing basketball. Pascrell hits the nail on the head when he says Democrats cannot blame anyone but themselves for not explaining health care reform properly. Most Americans do not understand the House or the Senate versions and most, I would venture, do not believe their elected officials do either.
I have two words for Democrats: Tora Bora. President Obama and his 60-vote majority should have seized the moment when it was theirs. Moments are just that – moments – and they are fleeting. They may never come again.
The Bush administration could not deflect criticism for failing to go after Osama bin Laden when there was an opportunity at Tora Bora. Perhaps U.S. troops would have found and captured bin Laden. We will never know. But we do know the opportunity was lost.
Obama isn’t going to get a 60-vote majority in the Senate again in his first term. He will be lucky if Democrats hold on to majorities in both the House and Senate if the recent Massachusetts election was an indication of public opinion. The president should have muscled his way through the Democratic caucuses of both chambers and made it clear: You’re with me or you’re out.
Wars are rarely won on a strategy of timidity. Pascrell enjoys lobbing a few rhetorical grenades from time to time. Democrats need more tough-talking, middle-class people in Congress. Pascrell may not care whether House leadership likes what he says, but House leadership should be concerned that representatives like Pascrell, who live and breathe the Democratic Party, are unhappy with how health care reform has been handled.
Pascrell is not a millstone; he’s a touchstone. Pelosi should pay attention.
The State of the Union will give Obama a bit of a bounce in the polls. But it doesn’t matter. Democrats have lost their 60th vote in the Senate.
Their party’s leadership squandered their moment. I don’t know what they were thinking, or drinking, for that matter. It sure as heck wasn’t tea.
Alfred P. Doblin is the editorial page editor of The Record. Contact him at doblin@northjersey.com
