Last fall, I though I was voting for change.

I was in Harlem the election night, and it felt like there was some vindication. 

But we cannot live on symbols alone.

It seems, however, that Obama administration has betrayed the progressives on most pertinent issues of the day.

The billion dollar bailouts to the finance industry.  The surge in Afghanistan.  But in all honesty, they were expected.

I mean, you have to give up something to become the POTUS, right?

But a meaningful healthcare reform, Obama admin. and the Democratic Congress is going to push that through.  I hoped...

How audacious of me...

When they tried to take single payer off the table, that was an alarming sign.

With so much popular support for single payer, you figure the administration could use this public support in their pocket when they negotiate for a strong, Jacob Hacker Public Option.

But no, discussion started with the public option, and then Dems wouldn't hold their ground, and drew the Medicare rates as their last stand.  Except the last stand for Dems is never the last stand, and finally we what we have is a meaningless public option that will cover less than 2% of Americans 4-5 years away from now.

What's worse, is that this 'reform' is a giveaway to the insurance industries, providing $70 billion in government subsidies to private health insurance companies annually...  (let's say it costs $23,000 to cover a family of four, this money could cover 12 million people straight..)

I'm not a deficit hawk, and especially in times like this, I believe that the government should be spending.  Just not on wars, finance industry bailouts and insurance industry giveaways.

The 'prgamatists' say that we need the permission of the insurance industry to pass this bill.  AHIP is already in motion to defeat this puny reform, because they don't think it gives away enough for the private insurance industry.  They want to strengthen the mandate to buy insurance, and I'm sure Senate will be more than happy to oblige, because they need more money to win elections and are not as tied to their districts as the House reps. are.

This will institutionalize private insurance plans, the very source of the problem, and will roll back the work single payer advocates have put in.  And remember, the public option, in its original incarnation, was supposed to insure 150 million people as a step toward single payer.

President Obama and the democrats are showing no heart on this one.

HR 3962 needs to die, (and unfortunately, progressives need to look to Lieberman and Baucus types to kill it, as we have no pull in the Senate...)

We need to remember 2000.  Democrats acting like Republicans led the way for Nader's rise, and if the Dems don't shape up and acknowledge that their base is progressive, start acting like it, they will sink hard in 2010.

Which might not be such a bad thing.