Obama should do nothing... [View all]

[Drunken Irishman]

Case in point:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10026599956

Had Obama not announced this at all, no one would have ever thought to bitch about it. There wouldn't have been a thread deriding him on not providing more reading opportunities to lower-income children and the issue would have never warranted even the most mildest of disdain.

Had he done absolutely nothing, no one on DU would have cared.

He does something and we care. It's not good enough. He should do this, or that, or this and that.

But what he's doing is not good...even though, ultimately, it's infinitely better than nothing.

It's the same with healthcare. Had Obama never pursued healthcare reform, maybe we would have had some 'what if' gripes, but on the whole, the issue wouldn't have been entirely too divisive. We don't consider Carter a failed president because he couldn't get healthcare reformed - same with JFK or FDR. Sure, there was Medicare, but even that was a monster compromise that, if it happened today (only a limited amount of people qualified, specifically elderly), we'd probably shoot that down, too. But the reality is that if Obama had not gone hard for healthcare reform, and today we're living under the same system where the uninsured is growing, more and more people lack sufficient healthcare due to pre-existing conditions, and states aren't expanding their Medicaid programs to help service the poor, the cries would probably be far less than what we've experienced over the last few years toward Obamacare - namely it's not good enough.

Yet even the harshest of critics would concede it's better than nothing - it's better than what we had.

Isn't that funny how it works? Doing nothing ultimately is the easiest route because it's also the route of least resistance. Had Kennedy never said anything about going to the moon, no one would have second-guessed anything he did. The status quo, in and of itself, is easier, far easier, than even marginal change because that marginal change, no matter how much could have been accomplished, is still never good enough once the ball gets rolling.

Obama should have pushed for universal healthcare - he should have been a bigger advocate for the public option. But because he wasn't, he failed - he failed you, he failed liberalism, he failed any hope of true, meaningful reform.

But he didn't. He got reform. It works. It's not perfect - but it works. Just as Medicare worked, even though it wasn't a universal system for every single citizen. Social Security, too, works, even though it's not a guaranteed wage for everyone.

And we know it works compared to what the alternative of doing nothing would have been.

It's just an interesting paradox. You do something, and the backlash to doing something is probably greater if you hadn't done anything to begin with. In the end, though, what is done helps - even if, in some instances, only marginally.

But on the whole ... it helps significantly, especially compared to nothing.