What if Health Care Reform were really Socialist? - how great would THAT be

So Health Care has passed.

And Liberals are getting ready to eat it for the next nine months. To put yourself in our particular frame of mind, imagine you're in a castle (c'mon indulge me). You look outside and you've got William Wallace' screaming hordes of angry Scots amassing outside the gates. Now imagine your own soldiers are over 65, incontinent, and don't particularly give a @#$%.

Finally, imagine you're just house-sitting the castle for your evil uncle who never really did @#$& for you anyway.

We know the bill sucks (though it's "still a vast improvement over the status quo" - quotes aren't because I don't believe it but because it's now kneejerk, drummed into me over months and months).

• State Exchanges!!?! No. State exchanges with opt out. (It's truly perverse, because Republicans argued for competition across state lines, but made it impossible to include in the bill.)
• Obviously, no public option, no medicare expansion. (While it's true the PO wasn't the "be all and end all" of the bill, it was a powerfully symbollic to Liberals, as one of the few elements not written by and for the corporations.)

The whole thing's a Rube Goldberg contraption, assembled at the behest of the lobbies to avoid offending anyone. (Just watch the comically well-meaning reporters at PBS try to sus it out.) And this is what we're being asked to defend. And this is what's being decried as tyranny, Frank Luntz-ified into a "government takeover."

Imagine, just for a moment, what we could have done with an actual government takeover.

Medicare for all? I'm picturing a parallel universe where Liberals didn't run from the Luntz phrase "government takeover" but embraced it, using the phrase as often as possible to talk about about all the benefits of simplicity, cost savings, portability allowing more dynamism in the economy, the moral imperitives and all the rest. What if politicians (beside Alan Grayson, Dennis Kucinich and Anthony Weiner) would stand up and invert Reagan's mantra: "government doesn't have to be the problem - it can be the solution." God what if we had actual socialists counterbalancing the far right?

What could possibly go wrong?

Would people be oiling up their guns? Would people be throwing bricks through windows? Would Sarah Palin be using none-too-subtle allusions to gun violence in her tweets?

The same mixture of sensible philosophic objectors, militia members, rank-and-file neocons and cynical media stars would be lined up saying exactly the same things (because what else could they say?), and the average people like you and me could pick a position in the true center, deciding which forms of government involvement we wanted (health care) and which we didn't (warrantless surveilance, costly overseas occupations of countries not posing an immediate threat, "too big to fail" corporate welfare).

What's stopping Democrats from adopting such a "radical" stance? Obviously not the polls-

• The public option has consistently polled above 50 percent, whereas the Senate Bill polls at something like 35 percent.
• According to a recent CBS News poll 54% of respondents believe the Senate Bill will not effectively cover Americans, and pluralities believe it will not effectively control costs or regulate the insurance industry. If, however, you add up the respondents feeling the bill is adequate and those feeling it doesn't go far enough, the equation changes: 54 - 39 covering Americans, 45 - 39 for controlling costs. Across the board, only minorities believe the bill goes too far.

As a Democrat, would you not want a majority on your side? Why would you decide to pass an unpopular bill that could easily be made extremely popular and then run on that in 2010? Do you have any idea how many Liberals would mobilize to reelect to you if you showed even the most cursory interest in pleasing anyone beside Signa?

As a bookend, I received another email from Organizing for America this morning - a champagne-lubricated victory party for New York area supporters. It was the first thing in the morning, and I strained to see the text through blurry eyes.

This Thursday, March 25th, OFA supporters will be gathering in Manhattan to celebrate the historic passage of health care reform -- and our role in making it happen. We'll get together with OFA staff and volunteers to talk about how far we've come and what we've accomplished together.

No offense guys but I think I'll sit this one out.