Commenting on the Konczal post I referred to yesterday:
Unlike conservatives, who are right-wingers first and Republicans second, all too many progressives put loyalty to the Democratic Party — most of whose politicians, including Obama, are not economic progressives — above fidelity to a consistent progressive economic philosophy. These partisan Democratic spinmeisters are now treating Obamacare, not as an essentially conservative program that is better than nothing, but as something it is not — namely, a great victory of progressive public policy on the scale of Social Security and Medicare.
In doing so, progressive defenders of Obamacare may inadvertently be digging the graves of Social Security and Medicare.
If Obamacare — built on means-testing, privatizing and decentralization to the states — is treated by progressives as the greatest liberal public policy success in the last half-century, then how will progressives be able to argue against proposals by conservative Republicans and center-right neoliberal Democrats to means-test, privatize and decentralize Social Security and Medicare in the years ahead?
I predict that it is only a matter of time before conservatives and Wall Street-backed “New Democrats” begin to argue that, with Obamacare in place, it makes no sense to have two separate healthcare systems for the middle class — Obamacare for working-age Americans, Medicare for retired Americans. They will suggest, in a great bipartisan chorus: Let’s get rid of Medicare, in favor of Lifelong Obamacare! Let’s require the elderly to keep purchasing private insurance until they die!
I’m sure a number of token “centrist” Democrats will be found, in due time, to support the replacement of Medicare by Lifelong Obamacare. And with neoliberal Democratic supporters of the proposal as cover, the overclass centrists of the corporate media will begin pushing for Lifelong Obamacare as the sober, responsible, “adult” policy in one unsigned editorial after another.
A very plausible scenario. I wonder, though, if Neoliberalism's days are numbered. Elite bipartisan opinion is still enamored of it, so it still has legs. But Neoliberal education reform, at least, seems to be buckling because parents and teachers are finally "getting it" and are fighting back locally. In the long run it's winning the local fights that will change things in D.C. The Right understands this in a way the Left doesn't yet.
I think economic progressives like me are forced to support Democrats and their awful Neoliberal programs like Obamacare, because the Right has been very successful in keeping progressives in a defensive posture. The Right is far more energized than the Left, and until that changes, the Democrats must be supported as the dike wall that holds back the flood.