Katrina vanden Heuvel attacks the notion that the “Blue Dog” congressman are centrists or moderates. She rightly points them out as right of center.
At this moment — when 72 percent of the nation supports a public plan option and 14,000 people lose their healthcare every day — the House Blue Dogs and conservative Democratic Senators are doing just about everything they can to cripple real health care reform.
So why does the media keep ceding them the label of “centrist” or “moderate” as if they are the guardians of mainstream values? In a recent profile on reform slayer Max Baucus — Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and creator of his majority Republican “Coalition of the Willing” — Washington Post reporter Dan Eggen refers to Baucus as “a longtime centrist in the Democratic caucus.”
Most Democratic politicians endorsed a Presidential candidate and their platform in 2008. Barack Obama promised a public option with no mandate, Hillary Clinton a single payer system with a mandate. If these so called “Blue Dog” Dems endorsed a candidate they should have expected to get health care done once the sun set January 20th. They knew what they signed on for. The current media narrative is that we are witnessing a healthcare “debate”. We did witness a debate, a full throated two year long guantlet called a Presidential election. It is a healthcare hijacking with Max Baucus and the “Blue Dogs” being the main henchmen for the inside job funded by donations from insurance companies and health care providers.
It wasn’t just the President that promised health care reform to the American people. Its time this be brought up over and over again any time a Blue Dog Dem would otherwise cast themselves as a fair minded, principled group of legislators who believe healthcare reform can wait.