Fight or Flight

“Why won’t he Fight!”
- Jefferson Davis in fit of frustration at Gen. Johnson’s repeated retreats through Georgia in the face of Sherman’s march towards Atlanta.

“I propose to fight it out along this line if it takes all summer.”
-Gen. U.S. Grant – May 11, 1864.

"I used to take his money when we played poker. Now he's trying to take mine.”
- Illinois state Sen. Bill Brady (R), quoted by the National Journal on how he misses the "old" Barack Obama.

General Grant and Jefferson Davis were very different people. However, Grant the sloppy soldier, from a working class background, and Davis, the patrician politician both understood to win you had to fight. Retreat and compromise might gain a short term advantage, but in the end you lose. If you are going to win anything, you have to fight for it.

This week, Davis’ frustration was the frustration of liberal/progressive Democrats who voted for Barack Obama as they watched yet another compromise on the Senate health reform proposal.

I will be honest, I share their frustrations.

I understand what Obama inherited. He had two wars that the previous administration left languishing, and an economic collapse that threatened the world economy. I do remember his speech in Grant Park on election night, in which he warned us all that the changes that needed to be made may not all be accomplished in his first year, his first term, or even in his administration.

However a year later, in his biggest battle, he seems willing to retreat when faced with any opposition, and we are left, like Jefferson Davis, stomp our feet and tear our hair and yell “Why won’t he fight?”

Gen. Robert E. Lee once said the hardest thing about being General, was you loved your army but to lead it, you had to be willing to lose it. The Obama White House is afraid to sustain the damage that a losing political fight would inflict. But that also means they can’t reap the rewards of winning a major battle.

Let’s think about what would happen if they pushed their chips “all in” like they have done in Afghanistan. What would be different if Rahm Emanuel told Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to “fight along this line all summer”?

In the best case scenario, Obama would rally support for the Medicare buy-in plan and force Lieberman to back down and the President would look like a powerful savvy leader. The public would have an alternative to the insurance industry when they are required by the Government to buy into health plan. The Democrats would be in a strong position going into both the 2010 and 2012 elections.

On the other hand if Lieberman didn’t back down and he used a filibuster to kill health care reform, the White House and the Democrats would have a very strong story to tell in the 2010 mid-terms. Every Democrat would be able to run on a platform that in the last session, the Republicans and Lieberman sided with big industry against the little guy to protect the profits of the richest industry in America.

Democrats would be able to expand this theme into a national campaign against the “do-nothing congress,” much like Harry Truman did. The Republicans would constantly have to explain why they feel leaving vast amounts of Americans uninsured and without health care is the right thing to do. Democrats could expand their majority to 60 “D” votes. Then they could enact true health reforms without having to cater to the Joe Liebermans of the Senate.

But sadly this chance has passed us by.

With compromise after compromise the feeling grows that Democrats killed health care reform by slicing off huge chunks until nothing was left, all in an attempt to attract Lieberman’s vote. We can’t run against Republicans for killing health care reform because we did it for them.

The narrative now – regardless of whether or not it is true – is that any health reform plan that passes congress is inadequate and forces citizens to buy expensive, unfair policies. The Democrats in the Senate, the story will go, gave the insurance industry a big financial gift at the expense of the little guy.

Now we have nothing to show we helped the average voter any more than the Republicans did when they were in power. What will we say in 2010? “Vote for us because on the things that mattered most – from health care to finance reform, and Wall Street bail-outs we sided with big industry against the average voter”? Or “Vote for us because every time entrenched interests oppose us we give in and fold our cards”?

No wonder Illinois State Senator Bill Brady loved playing poker with Obama. I begin to wonder if every time Brady bluffed, Obama folded. When Obama folded in those late night Springfield poker games he would lose a pot. Now when he folds in the bigger poker game in DC he loses a “full House.”