So, What Really Happened?

Dr. Errington Thompson

Last Tuesday the media pontificated about a tidal wave of Republican support. Beginning in January Republicans will control the House. Pundits, political gurus, and knuckleheads alike gave us their two cents’ worth — everyone was happy to tell us what happened and why. Sadly, most of the “wise men” (and women) missed what really happened. I’m going give you the real deal.

Americans were told repeatedly over a period of months that the Obama administration was failing, had failed. He and the Democrats simply were not listening to the American people. Healthcare reform was not what America wanted. Well, that is not really true.

If you look at the Gallup polls that go back over ten years, Americans favored healthcare reform by a two-to-one margin for over a decade. It is only recently that polls have changed. When you analyze healthcare reform — which should be called health insurance reform — the majority of Americans favor the government preventing insurance companies from dropping patients when they get sick, or placing yearly or life-long caps on expenses; they like being able to keep children on their parents’ policies until age 27.

In a CNN poll 40 percent of Americans liked the new healthcare law, and
56 percent didn’t like it. Conservatives will stand up and yell, “See,
we told you!” But that’s only half the story. Almost a quarter of those
56 percent (13 percent) believe that the law did not go far enough.
Putting it another way, the law was not progressive enough. Doing the
math correctly, 53 percent of Americans supported some sort of
healthcare reform.

In our country, a big part of the problem is that the mainstream media
only portrays two sides of any issue. There is no nuance, no
acknowledgment that some stories have only one side — provable facts —
and others deserve discussion from multiple perspectives. But whether
reporting on the bailout of GM/Chrysler, Wall Street reform, withdrawing
from Iraq, or the economic stimulus package, there were only two sides
to these debates, Obama’s side and the Republican side.

Time and time again we were told that Pelosi and Obama were trying to
turn American into some type of socialist republic, that they were out
of touch with America, that they weren’t listening to “the people.” In
fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Americans have wanted
fair pay between men and women for over a decade. Americans didn’t want
millions of Americans laid off because of the failure of GM and
Chrysler. Americans wanted healthcare reform. Polling clearly shows
this. So where was Obama out of touch?
I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that most of what President
Obama has tried to accomplish, he has done under duress. When he took
office, we were losing approximately 700,000 jobs per month. President
Obama passed a stimulus package with almost no Republican support. This
in spite of the fact that he reached out to Republicans and actually
added a variety of tax cuts and tax rebates to the bill specifically to
entice Republicans. We have now enjoyed four straight months in which
the private sector has added jobs, 150,000 in the month of October
alone.

President Obama was painted as a socialist for saving General Motors
from bankruptcy. Now, a little bit more than 18 months after the
taxpayers pumped in billions of dollars, General Motors is profitable
again, and starting to pay the money back.

It doesn’t matter what President Obama and the Democrats propose, the
Republicans oppose it. Last month they opposed $30 billion in tax cuts
targeted to middle-class businesses, simply because the Democrats
supported it. After years of insisting that limits on campaign finance
were unnecessary and that all that mattered was “full disclosure” of
contributions, when the Supreme Court threw out campaign finance laws,
Republicans opposed legislation requiring “full disclosure.”

The Republican Party’s nominal leaders, John Boehner and Mitch
McConnell, are following their true leader, Rush Limbaugh, who
proclaimed early in 2009, “I want Obama to fail.” McConnell declared
last week that the Republican party’s highest priority for the next two
years is not jobs, not growth, not helping rebuild our collapsed
economy, not ensuring the long-term health of Social Security — but
achieving their goal for “Obama to be a one-term president.”

What we saw on Tuesday was the complexity of America. Conservative
voters, tea partiers, and some independents clearly want Republicans
back in power and hope to reverse the Democrats’ accomplishments (even
those that weren’t progressive enough for liberals). Many liberals,
progressives, and other groups of independents were disappointed that
the Democrats hadn’t accomplished more in the face of Republican
obstructionism, and stayed home.

Most voters want the economy to recover quickly, or immediately, though a
lot of them won’t admit that the Republicans have proposed nothing that
would achieve that goal (and have opposed everything that has helped).
We also saw more conservative elderly voters turn out while younger,
more liberal voters stayed home. And we saw the media push the
Republicans because a good fight is always great for ratings.

It’s that simple — or rather, that complex.