“We’ve Never Been So Close”
By Paul Bass - New Haven Independent
Visitors to the Lawn Club were in full campaign mode to pass sweeping health care reform in 2009 — and to propel an old favorite into the governor’s race in 2010.
The occasion Wednesday night was the monthly meeting of New Haven’s chapter of Democracy for America (DFA), the national liberal activist group founded by Howard Dean’s brother Jim. The group draws Connecticut activists originally drawn to the 2004 Howard Dean presidential campaign, then the 2006 Ned Lamont for U.S. Senate quest.
The group usually meets at Wall St. Pizza (formerly Naples Pizza). It had two reasons to rent a bigger room, at the swanky Lawn Club, for Wednesday’s gathering.
Reason One: The group’s signature policy priority, “health care for all,” has a once-in-a-generation chance of passing both in Connecticut and nationally in coming months.
Reason Two: Lamont has been laying the groundwork to jump into the race for the Democratic nomination for governor next year. So Lamont and his ally Dean, along with a few others, paid for the ballroom rental and the free cheese hors d’oeuvres and dessert cakes. (It was a cash bar, though, which kept the mood sober.)
It felt like Old Home Week for the 2006 Lamont campaign with staffers and bloggers like Aldon Hynes (pictured) gathered among 50 activists.
One of the speakers was Tom Swan, manager of Lamont’s campaign and current head of the state’s leading progressive-issues activist group, the Connecticut Citizen Action Group.
Swan noted that a sweeping health reform plan, SustiNet, just passed its fourth state legislative committee Wednesday. The plan seeks to cover the state’s uninsured and underinsured by lowering health costs (through digitized medical records, “medical homes,” “periodic quality reviews” based on “evidence-based medicine) and expanding the state employee medical pool to include self-employed people, small businesses and non-profits.
The plan now advances to the full State House of Representatives, where a safe Democratic majority promises easy passage. From there a tougher fight looms in the State Senate; then, if it gets that far, a reprise showdown with Gov. M. Jodi Rell.
“We’ve never been so close,” Swan (at left in photo) told the crowd as organizers from a universal health care group handed out pro-reform cards to send to elected officials. “The next five months are arguably the most important five months in this issue that we’ve seen in our lifetimes.”
Jim Dean echoed Swan’s assessment in describing the scene in Washington, D.C., where President Obama and leading Democrats are pushing a health reform bill similar to SustiNet. It would create a Medicare-like government insurance plan for the 47 million Americans without health insurance as well as the many more who have some coverage, but either can’t afford it or receive too little in benefits.
Dean noted how times have changed politically. President Clinton last tried to reform health care in 1993 with a narrower effort, and even that failed. Obama campaigned on this more expansive plan, and won. Public opinion supports it; health insurers who declared war on the Clinton plan are seeking to make concessions to the Obama plan in order to water it down. As in Connecticut, the House of Representatives in D.C. seems to have a good shot of passing the plan.
One difference between 2009 and 1993: Universal health advocates are trying to seize the “choice” mantle from the insurance lobby.
Insurers convinced voters (with the “Harry and Louise” ads, for instance) that a government-run insurance plan would take away their ability to choose their own doctors and make health-care decisions, while bloating bureaucracy with inefficiencies.
This time around, Obama, Dean & co. have taken the lead from John Edwards’ 2008 presidential campaign: They propose to create a government-run plan, but keep private insurance in place, too, and let people decide which one to join.
Dean Wednesday night told the assembled activists that, like many of them, he’d prefer an out-and-out “single-payer” government plan similar to the one proposed by U.S. Rep. John Conyers of Michigan. Advocates believe such a plan would cost less and provide better care than profit-driven private plans.
But Obama’s plan represents the best shot at bringing historic progress, Dean said. Giving people a taste of an alternative to private insurance plans could build support for moving to a complete single-payer plan down the road, the argument goes.
“We have single-payer health care in America for people over 65” through Medicare, Dean noted. The current goal is to offer that option for people under 65, without forcing them to abandon private insurance plans.
The evening’s headlining speaking slot was reserved for Lamont (pictured). He offered a spirited campaign-style talk. He thanked former campaign supporters. He threw out sound bites (about iconic voters like “that dad from Sikorsky” worried about health coverage for his child with a pre-existing condition). And threw in a gibe at the end against Republican Gov. Rell. Many in the room expect him to take her on next year, if he first wins a Democratic primary challenge.
Click on the play arrow to watch a chunk of the speech, as recorded by the Advocate’s Andy Bromage.
“We’re going to have to push. We’re going to push hard!” Lamont told the crowd.
“They’re [the insurance lobby] going to push. We’re going to push back.”
His 2006 campaign against U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman was characterized as a referendum on the Iraq war. On the hustings, it turned out to be just as much about affordable, universal health care, Lamont said. “Wherever I went I heard about health care. It was hitting their wallets. It was hurting their hearts.” (He beat Lieberman in a Democratic primary, then lost in the general election when Lieberman ran as a Bush administration-supported “independent.”)
Lamont cited the recent crowd (1,000-plus strong) that gathered outside Hillhouse High School starting at 4 a.m. when a group called Mission of Mercy offered free dental care. Most of the people desperate for care have jobs, he noted.
“That’s what wrong with health care today,” he said.
And he made a point of arguing that Gov. Rell has failed to use her high popularity ratings to tackle that or other policy challenges.
For the record, Lamont isn’t talking about running for governor. He talks about “getting stuff done” and the need for a governor to lead that charge, as he did in this Advocate interview, for instance.
Wednesday night he repeated for now he’s busy working on statewide issues and has no plans to make any kind of announcement about a gubernatorial run “for a long time. There’s plenty of time to figure that stuff out.”
Other leading Democrats — Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz, Stamford Mayor Dannel Malloy, and former state House Speaker Jim Amann — have already started running hard. The conventional wisdom is that unlike them, Lamont can afford to wait until early next year to start a formal campaign. His personal wealth means he doesn’t need to raise as much money as they do. And his 2006 campaign against Lieberman gave him statewide, even for a time worldwide, name recognition.
U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd has also not officially announced he’s running again in 2010. But unlike Lamont, he has a team hired and already working hard on the ground, including a new campaign manager, Jay Howser (pictured). Howser is a veteran Democratic campaign staffer whose previous bosses include U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and, in his last quest in 2002, the late U.S. Sen. Paul Wellstone of Minnesota. Dodd has been racing around the state himself, including repeated stops in New Haven, to try to resuscitate his career amid a series of debilitating scandals. Howser and crew were on hand at the Lawn Club Wednesday night.
From the podium Tom Swan promoted Dodd from the podium as an “instrumental” leader in the D.C. fight for universal health care. Swan has helped Dodd burnish his progressive bonafides in the senator’s Career Resuscitation Tour.
Source: http://newhavenindependent.org/archives/2009/05/weve_never_been.php
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