If one thinks about that for a bit, one realizes that tabling the "public option" isn't really for the ostensible purpose of helping make single-payer more congressionally feasible or moving it closer to political reality, but for the purpose of replacing it.
As mentioned above, any "public option" with real progressive intent would inevitably destroy the private health insurance industry. It would, for that reason, encounter the same stiff resistance from congressional Republicans who want to subordinate healthcare to profits. So why would anyone propose fighting the same "impossible" battle for a half-assed version of what you supposedly want, rather than for the full thing? Answer: Because those proposing it want the half-assed version, not the real thing; because they don't want to destroy the private health-insurance industry; and because they, too, subordinate healthcare to profits.
Neoliberal Democratic legislators are not pitching "other strategies" in order to make single-payer more feasible to Republicans. They are not trying to persuade Republicans, or even the many Democrats who are dead-set against it, to vote for a single-payer bill. They're trying to persuade you not to fight for one. They want you to accept that they are not fighting for it and are going to present something less, and they want you to agree with and congratulate them for doing so.
As Margaret Flowers says, introducing a public option will not convert any opponents, but it will "divide and confuse supporters of Medicare for all." And that is its purpose.
The number of Democratic co-sponsors of Bernie Sanders's bill, which they know has no chance of passage, indicates nothing in this regard. As they did in California, Democrats will proclaim their commitment to single-payer, as long as they don't have the power to make it happen. In California, they started back-pedaling the minute they had that power. Here, they're already back-pedaling pre-emptively, from the moment they sign on to "aspirational" legislation. It would be foolish not to hear what they are saying.
So the most difficult obstacle to single-payer isn't that there are too many Republicans in congress. The most difficult obstacle to overcome is the commitment to capitalist market principles among Republicans and Democrats. Sure, the majority of Republican legislators adamantly opposed to any such thing makes single-payer impossible right now. But electing more Democrats won't necessarily change that. If the congress were full of Bernies, I'm sure it would pass single-payer. If it were full of Cory Bookers, not so much.
Everyone, Bernie Sanders included, who wants single-payer healthcare should understand clearly that this fight is not between the Democrats and Republicans. Single-payer won't come as a result of congresspeople talking and negotiating amongst themselves, or of Democrats either persuading or outnumbering Republicans, It won't pass a Republican-controlled Congress or a Democrat-controlled Congress. We saw that in 2009, where no Republican vote was received or needed for whatever the Democrats wanted to pass--which was not single-payer. The Democrats' shunning of single-payer wasn't because of Republicans in 2009, and it's not now.
The Democratic Party as an institution, as opposed to its constituency (to which it is opposed), is against single-payer. Through its financial infrastructure (and media assets), on which all of its candidates and legislators depend, it will pressure any of them who may have other ideas, and concoct any excuse or diversion, to prevent a robust and irreversible single-payer program. That's what it did in 2009, and that's what It will do again. If it can; if we let it.
Pace Bernie Sanders, recognizing neoliberal Democrats' opposition to single-payer, and fighting it, will be much better for advancing the cause than buying their pretense of support, and letting it bend you to their will. The fight for single-payer requires a fight against the Democratic Party. Bernie Sanders kinda-sorta knows that, but really wants to avoid it. Without that fight, single-payer will never, ever happen.
This is a tough fight, because we're asking capitalist politicians to sacrifice a capitalist industry for the social good. (And, yes, it can and will be argued, for the good of the capitalist economy as a whole--but there's a stubborn resistance to any such class disloyalty.) The only thing that will get single-payer done in any congress is a massive, in-their-face public demand that politicians of both parties are too afraid of to deny. It will be done by a popular movement, independent of both parties, that creates a political atmosphere which encourages single-payer supporting candidates from both parties (yes, there will be Republicans) to come forward, and elects a congress where even some of those who don't want to vote for single-payer, will.
That will only happen if single-payer advocates, many of them Bernie supporters, maintain a clear and consistent demand for publicly-funded, universal and equal coverage, for the easily comprehensible, proven-effective Medicare-for-all system--no if, ands, or doo-dads. That will only happen if single-payer advocates refuse to be divided and confused with any of the complicated schemes and doo-dads whose only purpose is to maintain a stream of payments to the private health-insurance industry. That will only happen if single-payer advocates, including Democrats and Bernie supporters, speak and act independently of the Democratic Party and Bernie Sanders, and in opposition to any dilution-complication either might put forward pre-emptively. There's a reason--and it has everything to do with political feasibility--that there is not, never was, and will not be a "public option" movement. We cannot let anyone, even Bernie Sanders, try to turn the single-payer movement into one.
It's important to recognize that we're not in 2009, and we can't let Franken Democrats drag us back into a poor sequel of Obama's shunning of single-payer, played out within Bernie's bill, as it were--which is exactly what they are trying to do. The bill really wants single-payer, but "it turns out that [it] has provisions along those [public option] lines." With Bernie playing the 2017 version of Dennis Kucinich.
But Franken and Gillibrand are not Obama, and no cast of Clintonite characters today has anywhere near the political strength he had in 2009. Whatever hidden Easter egg neoliberal Democrats are hoping to hatch from it, Bernie's bill has put single-payer front-and-center on the public agenda. The Obamacare can has reached the end of the road, and Trump and the Republicans can't even find theirs. People are fed up with the half-assed schemes, and are open to, and literally dying for, the program that everybody needs: universal healthcare coverage as a right. It's just about the easiest political sell one could imagine.
Because of that, Medicare-for-all is becoming quite feasible, and every Democratic and Republican defender of capitalist healthcare is realizing that and fearing it. Hillary's "never, ever" cannot be said by Democrats anymore. Even Max Baucus, who had single-payer advocates arrested in 2009, is now saying "We're getting there. It's going to happen." That is why neoliberal Democrats are conjuring new, indirect ways of pushing against it--not because single-payer is not possible but because, more than ever, it is.
If universal coverage, single-payer, Medicare-for-all is not a winnable "non-reformist reform," there is none.
Let's not be diverted from single-payer again, for another scheme whose only purpose is to keep the private health insurance industry sucking profits and life out of people for another ten or fifteen years---after which it will again be obvious that single-payer is the only reasonable alternative. How many groundhog days will we wake up saying: "We're getting there. It's going to happen."? What a waste.
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