What would LBJ do to pass health care reform?

[Hortensis]

47. "He got things done." Exactly. He was a tremendous big thinker and doer.

In particular, Johnson knew virtually everything there was about how to use the many tools of government and created a number of them himself. Nice that Sanders invokes Johnson's victories, but he would have done well decades ago to study how Johnson accomplished them. Who knows, if his antipathy toward the growing concentration of wealth among a few had been combined with Johnson's know-how, perhaps he could have made a difference.

Johnson's actually my favorite president perversely because of both his greatnesses and his great and many flaws. I went to see him speak when I was a little girl. For me the dreadful tragedies for our nation of Vietnam absolutely include the derailment of Johnson's presidency in his first full term. What else WOULD he have accomplished then and in the next term that never was? He'd been against national healthcare as a senator, but not as a president. And I'm remembering that Johnson notified congress that climate change was real and they needed to start acting in 1965. He'd have fought the Kochs and their type, and my money would have been on him.

The nation's progressive mood lasted to the end of the 1970s. What else would he have accomplished with that wind still at his back?

If only.