Dear Friends,
We in Pennsylvania have built a huge movement for health care reform, so it is not surprising that we were one of the first places to witness the right wing’s vicious campaign of lies and intimidation at the Town Hall held by Senator Specter and HHS Secretary Sebelius in Philadelphia a week ago.
I’ll admit that we were all surprised by anti-democratic tactics that I had not seen in over thirty years of political activism. But, if we are all willing to work hard and keep to our strategy and take immediate action when we need you to, I guarantee we are going to win health care reform this year. And the right wing craziness is going to help us.
Here’s why: The right wing strategy has two parts. The first is to bring small numbers of people to events to get media attention by means of utterly outrageous action. The second is to distract attention from the serious issues that concern people—the rising costs of health care and insurance and the shenanigans of insurance companies that deny people coverage and care when they most need—by telling outright lies about what the bills before Congress contain.
For four reasons, this strategy is going to fail.
1. Despite the financial resources of insurance companies and right wing PACs, they cannot match the huge base of support we have built around the country in the last year. In Pennsylvania alone, we hold two or three health care reform events every day and we are ramping up our efforts in the next five weeks. While the media loves spectacles, the people who will ultimately decide whether health care reform gets enacted, the members of Congress, recognize that our movement has deep roots and a broad reach. The media will get this pretty soon, too.
2. The right wing tactics are so repulsive and arguments so completely bogus that they are driving people away. Tit for tat arguments often turn people in the middle off and diminish their interest in a issue among those who are politically unsure or uninvolved. But when an issue of manifest importance is being treated with seriousness and respect on one side and with patently ludicrous claims and contempt on the other, the first side wins. That’s us. (Click here to for a word document that answers the lies of the opposition with the truth.)
3. And most importantly, the people who are going to make the key decisions this year are the members of Congress. And the totalitarian tactics of the right wing have very much alienated members of Congress. I was in Washington this week meeting with staff members of some of our Blue Dogs, whose commitment to health care reform has sometimes seemed shaky. They are utterly furious at the right wing craziness. Some Representatives in Pennsylvania who had kept us at some distance, are now embracing us and looking for ways to help us get their defense of health care reform out to their constituents. Even Republicans are embarrassed by these tactics, which will put them on the defensive in Washington.
4. Our plan is not to directly engage the right wingers and their lies about health care reform legislation. We have and will continue to make available to the media and to you a detailed response to their distortions. However, our task out in the field is to focus on moving our message about the need to make health care affordable and secure for everyone forward. We will adopt certain tactics to help restore civility in town halls when the right wingers disrupt them and to contrast our message and our respect for true debate with that of our opponents. Click here for a guide to how you should respond to right wing attacks at the events you attend.
No one every promised that, after a hundred years of trying, it would easy to secure quality affordable health care for all. We always knew that this is a complicated issue in which there are no simple solutions. We always knew that the solutions we propose would be hard to explain and would create uncertainty among the American people. We always knew that there would be intense opposition from health insurance companies and right wing ideologues.
But we have designed this campaign, from the start, to focus on the problems of the insecurity cost of insurance that need immediate attention; to present real solutions that appeal to Americans—a choice of competing public and private insurance plans; and to build a movement that could withstand the opposition we always expected. Right now in Pennsylvania and across the country we are doing hundreds of events, canvassing, phone banking, meeting with members of Congress and helping them reach out to their constituents and running TV and radio advertisements to build support for health care reform.
We have made enormous progress. We have a very good bill in the House. The political dynamics of the moment will lead eventually, I think, to an equally good bill in the Senate. And we have a still popular, tenacious, and accomplished President leading us.
If you and people like you stay committed to this fight, I am absolutely sure we will win.
Thanks for all you do for health reform.
Marc
Marc Stier
PA State Director
Health Care For America Now