Their biggest mistake is what we call “surrender in advance,” assuming they can negotiate with insurance companies (or simply avoid some of their highly leveraged antagonism). Now that all Dems have been attacked as socialists for having even modest reform plans ought to cure them of that misguided belief.

What happens is the core progressive value gets undermined by halfway solutions.”

Glenn, I actually think the solution to the framing problem can be found in the language both progressive and more conservative parties use in talking about programs, and how they pay for them.

They use the term “Social Market Economy” — I know this is true in Scandinavia (read and speak Danish) and in Germany (also read and speak) and while the parties argue constantly about the balance between “Social” and “Market” no one would consider delinking them. In practice, what it means is that policy is weighed in both social and market terms, forcing an open political discussion of necessary or recommended trade-off’s. Let me give you an example of a small thing I followed a few years back.

This was a debate in the Danish Folketing — the parliment. Heart Researchers had completed significant research around the globe regarding the relationship between diet for school children where the school lunches were high in fats that contributed in middle and old age to heart disease. The proposal before the Folketing required the school lunch programs, and the canteens in upper schools and Universities, to reduce fats, and add more fruits and vegetables to the menues. The Ministry of Health provided the Folketing a quite detailed analysis of the lifetime costs to the National Health Service of heart disease caused by diet, as well as a projection of how much money could be saved by reducing heart disease via better children’s school diets — spread over 65 years. Loss of earning capacity due to disability was also laid out. It fell to the Folketing members to debate the social value of such a program, and the economic cost benefit analysis of the proposal. No one argued that it was “up to the parents” to decide whether to try to reduce their kids probability of getting heart disease — or perhaps that the science was bad, and who believed science anyhow — no, the frame was social market economy. Are heart healthy people better off? Happier? — and what are the potential ways available to reduce fat intake? What are the costs? And yes, they did make significant changes in school menues as a result.

This of course happened because all 14 parties in the Folketing didn’t question that heart disease cost their national health and welfare budget considerable funds, and every Dane is covered by the National Health Program — and lowering the incidence of Heart Disease saved money. So did postponing it to later years. Thus it was both a market decision and a social one.

And what party coalition sponsored this legislation — well the more conservative coalition. The Social Democrats went along of course, as the then leader of the minority — but no ism had any part in the debate. Fruit and Vegetables won.

We need to start using a concept like “Social Market Economy” — there is a good discussion of the evolution of the cross party concept particularly in Germany and France in Tony Judt’s recent book, “Postwar”

But, as I have suggested, selise, you temper your honesty with a gentle self-awareness which reflects a journey of depth and breadth, wrapped in wise humor …

;~D

but i’ll have to use it on a few right wingers – my ability to predict their response is not very good.