Too Late: Obama Organizers Finally Rail Against Obama on Health Care

As Congress stumbles toward some parody of health care reform, and the White House sends its talking heads out to parrot that this is the delivery of Obama's promises, those who once provided the grassroots manpower for the President's presidential campaign have finally started to voice their mass dissatisfaction.

On Thursday morning, Andy Stern, the head of the nation's largest labor group, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), sent out an internal e-mail to all of its employees titled "Where do we go from here?"

The e-mail, forwarded to me by an SEIU organizer, detailed the massive union's internal "Town Hall-style telephone call" recently that confirmed what has already been so clear on the micro level -- progressives are pissed, en masse.

Indeed, Stern wrote, "SEIU does not accept that this monumental effort - that this reform that is so necessary to the health and wellbeing of our economy, our families and our future - can be over without a fight. A fight to make it work for you and your families."

But the clincher was the note on which he ended: "President Obama must remember his own words from the campaign. His call of 'Yes We Can' was not just to us, not just to the millions of people who voted for him, but to himself."

The SEIU dispatched thousands of its professional organizers around the country on behalf of Obama's campaign, so it's no surprise Stern feels the SEIU held up its side of the bargain while Obama has not. As a result, Stern says the SEIU will continue to back Obama, but adds the caveat that he must fight for real -- and not stand-in -- reform, in order to guarantee that support.

The day after I received this SEIU e-mail, I got another from the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC). They are on a mission to track down Obama organizers who are dissatisfied with the President's handling of health care reform, particularly his capitulation on the public option. YesWeStillCan.org asks folks to send in e-mails and videos voicing their malaise, and the appeal comes from three former Obama for America staffers.

I myself supported Obama's candidacy. I even volunteered for him as early as April 2007, when he wasn't even being called a dark horse candidate yet. (That was probably Richardson.) I never believed, as many people I met during those campaign meetings did, that he was going to change everything, but I did find him more palatable than every other candidate.

Perhaps because I did not work full-time for the campaign, and in fact did all my volunteering at the very start, I quickly saw how moderate he was despite the hope-and-change rhetoric. I heard him say he would end the war in Iraq, but I also made out the fact that he thought Aghanistan was a "just war."

Most of the Obama for America people missed this sort of nuance, I think -- and who can blame them? The grassroots campaign they pulled off was exciting and like nothing else most had ever experienced. It's easy to get sucked in when it's your job, especially when you think you're winning. And I admit that despite my cynicism, I was still in a car full of friends honking around the hills of San Francisco on the night of Nov. 4. Who wasn't, after eight years of George W. Bush?

But we're not winning, of course. (We never do.) Think of Afghanistan and the giveaways to Wall Street. And now think of health care reform, which to me, has been the most disappointing element of the Obama presidency so far. It's been a total joke. Obama has taken no leadership and instead passed off reform to Rahm Emanuel, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Joe Lieberman, corporate centrists who shill to the same insurance and pharmaceutical interests who have caused the staggering rate of uninsured Americans -- 40 million! -- today. What use is a majority in both houses of Congress if you can't pass the biggest social reform on which you based your candidacy?

I commend the SEIU and the deflated Obama campaign staffers for what they're saying now -- and I encourage them. But the majority of this shoddy health care reform will be over by Christmas -- Obama's orders. These appeals, which I believe could have had great resonance, feel late.