Welcome To Health
Obama said on various occasions that if he were designing a health care system from the start he would choose a single-payer model, but he said that since we already have a private-insurance-based system he has decided to reform that one by adding a public component. The logic of his position was always this: let's do what seems "realistic" given the current alignment of forces. He gave no indication of being open to the notion that a new president has the right to fight for a vision that makes sense and should attempt to use his immense popularity for that purpose.
Contrast that with right-wing presidents such as Ronald Reagan and the two Bush presidents. It will come as no surprise to
you that we spiritual progressives did not support the dramatic changes they proposed. But we have a lot of respect for the
fact that they were willing to fight for changes that went against popular sentiment, and in the process they managed to move
the national dialogue a long way toward their own set of assumptions.
Ronald Reagan managed to popularize the notion that the capitalist competitive marketplace could provide the economic
security that people had previously gotten through New Deal-era public programs. He was so successful that Bill Clinton,
representing the centrists organized in the Democratic Leadership Council, pushed through an "end to welfare as we have known
it, "provoking major liberal figures in his administration to resign in disgust.