George Lakoff has an excellent piece on truthout today on the disaster that is and has been President Obama’s health care reform campaign. It’s long and it’s excellent – Lakoff’s piece, not the catastrophic reform effort – and I hope to God someone at the White House reads it. Whenever I get Organizing for America emails, I wonder just what the hell I’m supposed to do for them. I really do. Am I supposed to go sit at a boring-ass party with some warm wine (I like wine with my whine) and a bunch of other people who already agree with me and complain about health insurers? Do we have to talk about big pharma too, or is that a separate party? Seriously, what are we supposed to tell people? Everyone knows the wheels are off the health care-mobile, we’ve all fought with insurers, or worried about family members who need expensive drugs, or thought twice about using insurance while getting our kids/selves/cats some therapy. Everybody knows. But the reform effort was easily hijacked by the anti-government right who demonized a public option with their shopworn stock phrases. The administration wasn’t ready, though it should have been, and let the whole debate run away without us. It’s time to take back the night, people, and Lakoff’s the one to show us how.

The biggest thing he points out is that the president came out with a list, rather than a unifying idea. Never underestimate the power of the unifying idea.

The list of what needs reform makes sense under one conceptual umbrella. It is a public alternative that unifies the long list of needed reforms: coverage for the uninsured, cost control, no preconditions, no denial of care, keeping care when you change jobs or get sick, equal treatment for women, exorbitant deductibles, no lifetime caps, and on and on. It’s a long list. But one idea, properly articulated, takes care of the list: An American Plan guarantees affordable care for all Americans. Simple. … As for language, the term “public option” is boring. Yes, it is public, and yes, it is an option, but it does not get to the moral and inspiring idea. Call it the American Plan, because that’s what it really is.”

Lakoff goes into a lot of fascinating detail, and you can read that at truthout, not here. Believe me, the amount of awesomeness it contains makes it well worth your time. I mean, how refreshing is the above? There’s lots more like it in the piece, but here’s another favorite of mine (in addition to “Doctors care; insurance companies don’t”):

The American Plan. Health care is a patriotic issue. It is what your countrymen are engaged in because Americans care about each other. The right wing understands this well. It’s got conservative veterans at town hall meeting shouting things like, ‘I fought for this country in Vietnam and I’ll fight for it here.’ Progressives should be stressing the patriotic nature of having our nation guaranteeing care for our people. A Health Care Emergency. Americans are suffering and dying because of the failure of insurance company health care. Fifty million have no insurance at all, and millions of those who do are denied necessary care or lose their insurance. We can’t wait any longer. It’s an emergency. We have to act now to end the suffering and death.



Doctor-Patient Care. This is what the public plan is really about. Call it that. You have said it, buried in Policy Speak. Use the slogan. Repeat it. Have every spokesperson repeat it.



Coverage Is Not Care. You think you’re insured. You very well may not be, because insurance companies make money by denying you care.



Deny You Care … Use the words. That’s what all the paperwork and administrative costs of insurance companies are about – denying you care if they can.”

People can understand that. Don’t you feel like you could fight for the American Plan? I’d sip a lot of warm wine in favor of it. Of course, if this campaign had been run half as well as the presidential campaign, I wouldn’t have to.