@Anonymous It’s great to see a Columbian doing so well — you go Janine! You make all us CU Dems proud.

But, her argument is actually weak tea, intellectually speaking. Obviously, landmark legislation takes compromise, she’s absolutely right about that. But, the failure to secure Social Security implementation for racial minorities in the 1930s is not nearly equivalent as an attenuation of progressive goals as is the various give-aways in the ACA. Social Security was a landmark because it brought America closer to social democracy, and away from means testing as a method of social welfare provision. Sure, expanding health care coverage is a progressive goal, but it’s also a conservative goal — the question is how we do it! And, as a reform of American social welfare, the ACA doesn’t break with the overall trends in public policy since the 1970s. We’re still means testing, and generally speaking, we’re still demanding people make their own way, even though it’s increasingly hard to do so.

The article Janine was responding to was about fighting the impulse to keep trying to build a more egalitarian economic society on a foundation of the dregs of neo-liberal macroeconomic and social welfare policy. Saying that the critics of the ACA are wrong because, look, Social Security had flaws, too! is ridiculous. Because the flaws Social Security had were ancillary to the overall goals of the progressives of the 1930s. With Social Security, they went for the gold, and they got it. The Dems fought hard for the ACA, and it’s a big improvement. But this doesn’t change the fact that going for the gold now as a Democrat–or liberal, or lefty, or whatever you want–means much, much less than it did. So, I’m saying that Janine missed the point, despite her well-worded and well-intentioned ode to racial and social heterogeneity.

Just my two cents.