Subject: [big campaign] New Huff Post from Creamer -- Don't be on the Wrong Side of History
From: [email-masked]
To: [email-masked], [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 20 Jul 2009 00:21:22 EDT
List-Id: <bigcampaign.googlegroups.com>

Memo to Members of Congress: Don’t Be on the Wrong Side  of History 

Today it would be hard to find one member of Congress who openly  advocates 
the abolition of Medicare or Social Security.  It’s true that during the 
Bush  Presidency right-wing Republicans tried to weaken, dilute and privatize  
both.  But their proposals were  always passed off as attempts to “
strengthen” these programs that have become  two of the most popular and widely 
respected institutions of  government. 
Of course it wasn’t always so.  Both Social Security and Medicare were 
incredibly controversial when they  were passed – the first in 1937 and the 
second in 1964. In fact, their opponents  sounded very much like today’s 
Republicans as they denounced them for being “big  government takeovers” – or, in 
the case of Medicare, “socialized  medicine.” 
But it wasn’t long after they were enacted that Social Security and  
Medicare became “third rails” in American politics.  Former Senator Bob Dole once 
made a  speech where he said: “I was there, fighting against Medicare.”  
The TV spot reprising that speech during  his 1996 campaign against Bill 
Clinton helped seal Dole’s defeat.  
The view shared by most Americans – and all senior citizens – was summed  
up in the slogan for the 2005 campaign to defeat Bush’s privatization 
program:  “Hands off my Social Security.” 
No one brags that their father or grandfather lead the fight to oppose  
Social Security or Medicare – any more than they brag that their forbearer lead 
 the fight against civil rights.  But  of course in the 1960’s, civil 
rights did not have the universal acclaim it has  today.   
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. had many detractors who thought his agitation  
for justice was downright subversive. Others thought that he wanted to move 
too  fast. That extended to the Pastors – many men of good will – who asked 
him to  call off his protests in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963.  It was to 
those Pastors that he wrote  his famous letter from the Birmingham jail: “Why 
We Can’t Wait.”   
In 1963 most people would not have dreamed that just a few decades hence,  
a national holiday would be named after the young organizer and agitator, 
Martin  Luther King.  
Every major social advance is  surrounded by controversy and conflict.  That
’s because every time there is change in the status quo there are  winners 
and losers.  The controversy  over President Obama’s health care reform does 
not center mainly on “differences  in approach” or academic disagreements 
over the way that health care systems  should be designed in some ideal 
world.  They center instead on battles over wealth and power – just as they did  
when the Congress created Social Security or Medicare, or passed the Civil  
Rights Act of 1964.   
That’s why the 19th Century abolitionist leader Frederick  Douglass was 
right: “You can’t have the rain without the thunder and lightning,”  he said.  
Of course Douglass was  referring to the granddaddy of all major social 
change in our history -- the end  of slavery. That required a horrific civil 
war.   
Health care reform involves one out of every six dollars spent in  America 
today.  It involves the jobs and livelihoods of  millions of people and the 
fortunes of huge corporations. Of course change in the health care system  
is going to be controversial. Luckily it is not controversial with average  
Americans.  On the health care  issue, Democrats – and the President – have 
the political high ground.  But that doesn’t mean it isn’t  controversial 
with the insurance companies or with wealthy Americans who may be  asked to 
pay a small increase in taxes (bringing their rates to the level they  were 
in the Reagan Administration) in order to pay for needed  reform. 
Members of Congress can’t avoid  the controversy.  If they want to,  they 
should look for another line of work.  All they can do is hope to be on the 
right side of history – to take  positions that their grandchildren will brag 
about after they are long  gone.   
All that they can hope – or any of us can hope – is that the things we do  
will stand up to the test of history – that they will make future 
generations  proud.  
Forty years ago today, for the first time in history, human beings first  
set foot on another celestial object when Neil Armstrong planted his boot 
print  on the moon. I was one of the millions of Americans who got up in the 
early  morning hours to witness first-hand the historic event live on 
television. It  was extraordinary – a phenomenal evolutionary advance for our 
species – brought  to us live from outer space.  
Less than a decade before, another young President challenged American to  
put that man on the moon. John Kennedy’s vision put America in the  
forefront of the technological revolution that created the jobs of the future --  
for a generation of Americans. 
This year, President Obama challenged us again – to create the jobs of  the 
future for our generation: millions of clean energy jobs.  
Last month, the House of Representatives voted to meet that challenge –  
passing an energy bill that will finally begin to break our dependence on  
foreign oil and make America a world leader in clean  energy technologies of 
the future.  Now, members of the Senate will have to decide which side of 
history they  will be on when it comes to creating a clean energy economy. 
In the next two weeks, Members of both the House and Senate will be  called 
upon to decide which side of history they will be on when it comes to  
ending our status as the only nation in the industrial world that does not  
guarantee health care as a human right.  
The Obama health  care bill is controversial because it will control the 
growth of health care  premiums for American families.  That, in turn, will 
take money from the pockets of some of the most  powerful special interests in 
the country – most notably the insurance  industry.   
But it is safe to say that one  day, future generations will look back on 
this battle and wonder way it wasn’t  obvious to everyone that every person 
has a right to health care – they same way  we look back today and wonder how 
anyone could have supported slavery.  Remember we still had slavery in  
America just 150 years ago.  
Our grandkids will wonder why anyone would balk at beginning to  
rationalize the bloated, inefficient American health care system that leaves us  37th 
in the world in health care outcomes and costs us 50% more per  person than 
any other country on the planet.  
They will look back on those who  tried to stand in the way of serious 
health care reform, the way we look back on  those who tried to block the 
creation of Social Security or Medicare or the  Civil Rights Act.  
Often, when political leaders are faced with historic choices, they are  
forced to choose between the next election – and the next generation.  This 
time, with the political wind at  our back, they don’t have to make that 
choice.  But they do have to choose to stand up  against special interest 
pressure and act decisively to take the actions that  are necessary to build a 
foundation for the long-term economic success of future  generations of 
Americans.  
So in the next few weeks, talk to  your Members of Congress.  Ask them  
each what kind of legacy they want to leave after their political career is  
done.  Tell them to stop worrying so  much what the lobbyists and big 
contributors think about their decisions and ask  themselves how those decisions 
will be viewed by history. 
Robert Creamer is a long-time  political organizer and strategist, and 
author of the recent book: “Stand Up  Straight: How Progressives Can Win,” 
available on _amazon.com_ 
(http://www.amazon.com/Listen-Your-Mother-Straight-Progressives/dp/0979585295/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1206567141&sr=8-1
) . 

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