The ongoing bickering in the blogosphere about the reactions in the various so-called “town hall meetings” on healthcare reform going on around the country (see here, here, and here) reminds me of nothing so much as a scene from a movie, I think It Happened One Night.
In the scene I’m thinking of (but wasn’t able to find on YouTube) Clark Gable and another character are getting in each other’s faces. No matter what Clark Gable says to him the other character’s response is “Oh, yeah?” Eventually, broken down by the power of his opponent’s oratory, Clark Gable responds with the inevitable and equally unanswerable “Yeah!”
In this dialogue between the Left and Right blogospheres as in so many the level of discourse is absurdly low, the equivalent of the unanswerable “Oh, yeah”, possibly because it is unanswerable.
I’ve watched a lot of videos of these various events and I think that it’s incontrovertibly true that a lot of what is going on is deliberate disruption. That’s wrong. However, I think that it’s equally true that many of those engaging in the disruption are ordinary people who are genuinely and legitimately concerned about the direction of the reforms in the healthcare system.
I think that both the Left and Right blogosphere are engaging in what is less manufactured outrage than mistaken outrage. For organizing to be effective it will inevitably become professional and to become professional it must become persistent. For Democrats that means it will be associated with enduring institutions, either unions or any of the various professional rent-seeking agitators since they perceive the Democratic Party to be friendly to the causes they’re interested in.
The phrase “union thug” has taken on something of the quality of an Homeric epithet for Right blogosphere bloggers. It’s an error. I think they’ve watched On the Waterfront too often. Not all union members are thugs, and not even all union organizers are thugs.
Left Blogosphere bloggers (not to mention Speakers of the House) calling those who disagree with them Nazis has become tedious. It is possible to disagree decently and honestly. However high your motives may be those who oppose the things you long for may have motives equally high. Their priorities may simply be different.
Of course there’s some element of corporate organizing in the opposition to the reforms the Congressional leadership is trying to rush through. Businesses are the enduring institutions that perceive the Republican Party as friendly to the causes they’re interested in. That’s just as legitimate as union organizers or other professional activists working on mustering popular support for Democratic causes and, as Mickey Kaus points out, it’s just community organizing. The current president and the last unsuccessful Democratic candidate both got their starts in politics as community organizers. It’s too late to complain about community organizing now, even if the organizing is against you.
Just for the record in my view the bills making their way through the Congress now are misguided and all but certain not only to fail in their objectives but to create secondary effects that overwhelm their intended benefits. I don’t believe that the federal government can manage the healthcare system any better than it can manage the banking system or the auto industry.
That doesn’t mean that I oppose reform: quite the contrary. I just think that we need to reform the right way this time around. As Ezra Klein pointed out not long ago we engage in major healthcare system reform roughly every twenty years. This time we’ve run out the clock and are in the final seconds.
People shout when they think their voice is not being heard. It’s not an idealogical phenomena.
One of my favorite recollections of Obama was after he won the seat to the U.S. senate seat, he held a number of town meetings in downstate Illinois to introduce himself, often in conservative-leaning forums. He sat down in the front and talked as much as he listened, impressing the audience.
The stakes have changed; those days are long past.
I think your comments, Dave, are a fair and sober assessment of what is going on.
I am somewhat amused at the arrogance – and apparent shock – of the left that gutter tactics can work both ways. That doesn’t make the tactics right, just easily anticipated. Further, I think PD has it right – this is in no small part a manifestation of the frustration of being ignored by the “ruling class.”
Obama is going all in. The next few weeks will be interesting.