Dems, Not GOP, May Kill Health Care Reform

Democratic members of Congress, party strategists and even President Barack Obama have tried their best to portray Republicans as obstructionists to health care reform and want all of us to believe that if the effort fails, it's all because of the GOP.

BS. The failure to pass health care reform would be a yoke around the Democrats' neck, and the lost moment would be all because of their inability to achieve unity among themselves.

Democrats have the perfect political hat trick. They control the White House, the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House, with a strong majority in both houses. But I'm reminded of something Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., told me nine years ago: Democrats know nothing about party unity.

Conyers was being interviewed for an election special I was working on for a now-defunct black cable network, and he said that if Democrats had a majority of the votes in the House, they really only had a unified group of about 165. That's because when you throw in the 50-something Blue Dog Democrats — strongly conservative members who some party loyalists liken to Republicans in Democratic clothes — then you have a different kind of dynamic than you do in the GOP, where the strong base of conservatives typically stays in line.

Then, of course, you have the far left, loud and noisy and oftentimes unwilling to compromise their positions in order to move legislation forward.

When you put the far left and the far right of the Democratic Party in one room, you see fireworks that rival a Democratic-Republican fight. And that's exactly what we are seeing now on health care reform.

All summer, the conversation has been dominated by the White House, which is trying to placate conservative Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats on the various health care bills being considered by the House and Senate. Both groups are adamantly opposed to growing the federal government, and with a rising deficit, the last thing they want is another $1 trillion program. (Most didn't mind the $1 trillion we spent on the useless war in Iraq, but I digress.)

The Obama administration thought it had the liberal/progressive wing of the party in its pockets and set its sights on satisfying conservatives in both parties. But last weekend, President Obama and Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius totally botched the deal by giving the impression that the public option isn't a major goal.

That drove the progressives/liberals nuts, and now the White House is trying to put the jinni back into the bottle.

The progressive/liberals are angry because they believe they have given up way too much in this health care bill with nothing to show for it in terms of Republican/Blue Dog Democrat support. Yet what no one wants to mention is that many of them still are seething over having to accept massive cuts in the stimulus bill by Republicans/Blue Dog Democrats in order for that to pass. President Obama implored them to support the changed bill for the good of the country, and they bit their lips and sucked it up.

That day is over. In many ways, the Democratic Party is too democratic. It has so many special interests that it's hard for its members to achieve major consensus without having to satisfy everyone. Republicans? They have a simpler base and always have found it easy to drive an agenda.

President Obama is desperate to toe the line on achieving bipartisanship with this health bill. He wants as many Republican votes as he can get, but he's not making considerable headway in that area. Maybe he has a shot at 10 votes in the Senate, but you can forget the House.

Now, because of the public option mess, he is going to have to shore up his progressive/liberal base, yet they are now emboldened and unwilling to cede more ground. So the time he wanted to spend on wooing conservatives will have to be spent on keeping his angry progressive/liberal wing intact.

Democrats have floated the idea of going it alone and passing health care reform. Some have said the president would pay a big price among independent voters if he were to do that. Well, tough. If health care was his first priority when he was elected, that should remain the case. Damn the 2010 midterm elections, and damn the 2012 presidential election. Congress has been trying for more than six decades to achieve health care reform, and the Democrats have all the stars lined up to do so.

If it doesn't happen now, I don't want to hear any carping from the left. Your own party had a shot and screwed it up. Dems, you will have no one to blame but yourselves. It's now or never. So stop whining about the Republicans, and get your own house in order.

Roland S. Martin is an award-winning CNN analyst and the author of the forthcoming book "The First: President Barack Obama's Road to the White House as originally reported by Roland S. Martin." Please visit his Web site at www.RolandSMartin.com. To find out more about Roland S. Martin and read his past columns, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2009 CREATORS.COM