Chuck Dimond

original post January 2010

Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in….

Multiple, complex factors form a political reality in Massachusetts.  Offer any explanation and the odds are good you’re at least partly right.  Before we drink the tea bagger brew though, let’s agree the country hasn’t suddenly taken a sharp right turn.  Democrats reflexively steering that direction sew the seeds that come harvest will exact a greater political cost.  The view from my window:

Summers and Geitner lead a Wall Street approach to promised financial reform.  The insurance industry gains billions in the name of universal health care.  Gays and lesbians endure less than human status with hardly a whimper from our national leaders.

Barack Obama as candidate passionately packaged values that joined a complex mixture of 53% of those who voted a year ago.  Barack Obama as governor massages a largely out of sight process.  The occasional glimpse reveals Joe Lieberman’s personal political rant holds greater power than reform.  The loud resulting noise is the air stampeding away from our January 2009 enthusiasm.

Yes, governing is different from campaigning.  Yes, Democrats cover a much larger political continuum than do Republicans and intra party discipline is harder.  Yes, Americans are not policy wonks.  But the strong majority that emerged to elect Barack Obama expects a government that adheres to its values.  Stand for the people as you said you would and fight the good fight.  Campaign reformer morphing to pragmatic President does not enthuse.

Democrats gifted political control of Congress to Republicans in 1994 with two sorry years of unforced errors.  Please, please could we avoid déjà vu?

This time Massachusetts warns.  Get up off the floor Democrats.  Stand and deliver.

original post December 2009

“We’re now on the one-yard line,” Ax locates the Health Care Reform ball.  Perhaps.  But any team in sports using the Senate playbook would never break the red zone let alone win a game.  Winning requires goals shared by individuals willing to sacrifice for the whole.  If a majority of 51 could pass legislation Senate Democrats might even meet the definition.

51 votes and we have a public option.  51 votes and we have Medicare buy-in.  60 votes and we are forced to provide universal health coverage through a system that insures obscene profits for private corporations.  60 votes and we enshrine the old system of torturing those profits from the sick and dying.

Paul Krugman provides deeper historical perspective of the filibuster in today’s New York Times.  Short version:  it was used sparingly until this arcane procedural rule ran into the current crop of Senate Republicans.

Let’s translate the GOP use of the filibuster for nearly every piece of legislation.  Republicans stand against the representative democracy built by our founding fathers.  They based the union on the ideal that common good grows from the free market place of ideas.  Come all and reason from from the best thinking of each individual.  Take action on the consensus of the majority.  Collective wisdom-the fuel of progress-is set free.

Those who know Vietnam will remember the words of one military commander:  We had to destroy the village in order to save it.  Senate Republican now apply the strategy to the nation.

Crawling through the emotional and intellectual minefield of health care reform grants all the right to disappointment.  It cannot take you to voting Republican in 2010 if you care about a more perfect American union.

original post December 2009

Simple conclusions disappear in the complexity of the topic.  The nation stands, teetering and barely balanced, on the precipice of universal health care coverage.  It is a heroic accomplishment.  Especially because it is realized only by fighting through every bobby-trapped Republican—and that would be all of them—in the House and Senate.  Ds in the House show more style and substance than their crawling, scraping counterparts in the Senate.

Senate sausage makers would achieve universal coverage using a deeply flawed system.  Pumping billions into big health care corporations they reward the past casual exchange of human life for monetary profit.  Is it very different from handing billions to the Wall Street titans who now stand against minimal protective regulation?  The pattern holds no promise.

Ah but included are these new regulations of the health care corporations.  Yes but they’re invisible when you stand within view of regulations in Switzerland—a country successfully using a private system to provide universal coverage.

Tied in a Christmas bow is the bottom line question:  will we stand between 31 million Americans and health care coverage because we so hate the corrupt corporations that will provide it.  Howard Dean and MoveOn.org demonstrate the answer doesn’t come easy.  The good doctor notes the rising cost of these corporate stocks as he warns that Senate Democrats condemn us to purgatory for decades.

Victory, even the bitter tasting, is victory.  Swallowing this pill should carry future rewards:  a Democratic party with the courage to learn and enforce minimal party discipline.  Hire political moving vans to carry “Democrats” willing to sacrifice common good for personal political gain to the home of their living dead soul mates—the Republicans.

And finally, our President must find his voice.  He grew hope from the soil of a very dark American chapter.  Carried to the White House on the shoulders of millions, audacity—not timidity—burned in the hearts of both army and general.

We hunger for audacity.  We need audacity.

original post October 2009

It is nearly one year since we Americans implemented hope.  Reflection and perspective are proper accompaniment for anniversaries.

A glass version of the rising sun emblem of the Obama campaign hangs on our bedroom wall.  Just under the cross.  It is for me a proper juxtaposition.  What we do together in the name of all is an elemental part of faith lived.

My personal commitment to Barack Obama grows from deep roots.  That he offered to be our President and that we accepted creates a bond beyond any individual political issue or period of time.  If not, we cannot sustain our form of government.

During the Obama For America campaign I had the luxury of time to give eight months of more than full-time volunteer work.  Witnessing his oath of office was more than adequate pay.

As I observed many people respond to campaign symbols one, more than any other, captured the heart of the collective effort:  Shepard Fairey’s Hope poster.  The American Age of Darkness, fully entered in 2,000, nearly extinguished hope.  Over time, hope takes many forms.  In the campaign, we each firmly held a personal knowing of hope.  In day-to-day governance external forces mold the shape of that hope.

Year one conclusions:

* The election of Barack Obama was a transformational event for America and for the world.  Alone, it is cause for a Nobel Peace Prize.

* The unambiguous ending of torture and working toward closing Guantanamo is a singular step toward restoring American honor.

* Seeking consensus among nations is the only strategy to unravel a twisted world community.

* Denying access to health care for any American is a national sin.  Repentance does not most effectively result from baby steps.

* Real action, not rhetoric, creates economic stability.  Reform of our financial system should always precede bailout.

* “…all men (and women) are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness….”  We remain in violation of our most emphatic first Declaration.

And so year one of the Obama Administration is for me more like an accomplished year in a Clinton Administration than a Kennedy’s.  I still hope for Camelot.

original post October 2009

The World Series opens tomorrow.  Basic strategies seem clear.  The Yanks and Phills are not small ball teams.  Seeking a single here, some steals, sacrifices and a methodical run or two isn’t their style.  While good enough to carry out any game plan, the National and American League champs are big inning teams.  Get leadoff hitters on base so the long ball sluggers that follow can bring them home.  We can only dream about players like these in Washington D.C..

In the midst of the worst health care crisis facing any modern, industrialized nation our elected representatives struggle months on end to implement any solution.  Senate Leader Harry Reid’s rejection of those pronouncing the public option dead is welcome.  But can you even call it small ball?

Reid’s public option offers the choice of a government run insurance program to maybe ten percent of the American people.  They could actually make that choice in about seven years.  And that’s if they don’t live in a state that chooses to opt out of the plan.

Almost one year ago the American electorate embraced a historically radical shift in public policy.  George Bush to Barack Obama is a 180-degree turn.  We now watch electeds who hang back at perhaps the 30-degree turn mark.

America needs a big inning.  Americans chose the big inning team last November.  It struggles to cross a minefield of ignorance, stupidity and crass power seeking.  The scene slaps the face of millions struggling for health and life.

We’ll of course take any progress on health care.  But as Peggy Lee sang a generation ago:  Is that all there is?