The Ghost Of Martin O'Malley

You knew I was going to bring Martin O'Malley up again eventually.  Because the more I consider the Democrats running for President in 2020 and the Democrats who may be running, the more I miss him.  I happen to think he made a big mistake by choosing not to run for President in 2020 after he was laughed out of the 2016 campaign with no real chance to make his case.  

So far, I haven't seen a single Democratic presidential candidate who's impressed me, at least not among the announced candidates, and I have one misgiving or another about the prospective candidates who haven't entered the campaign yet.  That includes Beto O'Rourke, whom I call Hamlet-on-the-Rio Grande.  It seems that none of them have the right mix of policies and purpose that I saw in Maryland's former governor.

I do see some of what he advocated in 2016 surfacing among Democratic members of Congress.  The Green New Deal that Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) proposed sounds a lot like the economic program O'Malley ran for President on.  Point being, when it comes to promoting an environmentally sustainable economy, Ocasio-Cortez, Markey and others are spreading the word.  O'Malley's word.  And I applaud him for letting others take the credit for an idea he championed when it's an idea that must be discussed and debated.  If no one will listen to O'Malley, they'll bloody well listen to Ocasio-Cortez, one of the biggest rising stars in the Democratic Party. 

But what if no one is listening to your ideas because no one is advocating them?  Just as the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about, the only thing worse than an idea that gets mentioned and rejected without discussion is an idea that doesn't get brought up at all, and that's where O'Malley's all-payer health care proposal from 2016 comes in.  I mentioned this plan before; it's a system that sets hospital fees to a global standard by having all third parties pay the same for services, which can increase the power of insurance companies to lower health care costs.  While other countries have used this system successfully, Maryland is the only U.S. state that uses it.  Unfortunately, because it's only used in Maryland, no one running for President - okay, except maybe O'Malley's fellow Marylander and fellow Irish homey John Delaney - is talking about it.  Democratic presidential candidates either champion Medicare for all - which may not work all that well - or tweaking the Affordable Care Act, although I don't know how you tweak a tweak.  All-payer sounds like a good step toward a real single-payer plan, yet there's no one out there to advocate for it. There wasn't even anyone to advocate for it in 2016; O'Malley tried to, but when he attempted  to  bring it up in a CBS Democratic presidential primary debate, moderator John Dickerson cut him off and went to a commercial break; when the commercial break was over, Dickerson moved on to another issue, and O'Malley didn't get much of a chance to bring it up in the two debates that followed before he withdrew as a presidential candidate. 

O'Malley's decision not to run for President in 2020 for what were likely trivial reasons involving his lack of pizzazz and his lack of melanin or a pair of X chromosomes still sticks in my craw, and his voice is sorely missed.  Well, I miss it.  O'Malley has become like Marley's ghost, witnessing debates he can't take part in but might have taken part in, had he chosen to walk among the likes of Kamala Harris and Cory Booker.  But maybe, just maybe, Beto O'Rourke - whom O'Malley has been encouraging to run for President - might be the antidote to those of us suffering from O'Malley withdrawal.  At a rally in his hometown of El Paso in which he corrected Donald Trump's lies about immigration and border security - lies Trump told at his own rally in El Paso that same night - O'Rourke came out as a passionate man of conviction who wants to do right by those who come to this country, and that's precisely the reason O'Malley wants him to run. Stay tuned.  Despite my doubts, Beto may be the one after all.

But if Beto doesn't run for President, I would hope that O'Malley reconsiders and reverses his decision. 

A Single Man

That would be Bernie Sanders.

Bernie Sanders just unveiled a single-payer health care plan based on expanding Medicare to everyone.  His plan has gotten mainstream media attention.  Republican senators are exaggerating and also just plain lying about the flaws of such a system by overhyping the problems with wait lists in Canada.  Trump called Sanders' plan a curse on America.  This is all a good thing; it means that more and more people want it, and the powers that be that force us to live - and die - like we do are afraid of the people getting ready to rise up for something they want.  They're going to brought to their knees one day.

Of course there are naysayers even among Democrats who want nothing to do with Sanders' ideas; Nancy Pelosi and Charles Schumer won't support it, believing that the health care issue has been settled.  Hillary Clinton - she of the book explaining why she's not to blame for losing the 2016 presidential election and of the pity-party tour to promote it - has been against it also.  And truth be told, some Democratic-friendly commentators fear old wounds being reopened if the party pursues Medicare expansion; they fear that a new debate on health care could undermine the Democratic Party going forward into the 2018 and 2020 elections. 

With all due respect, it's hard to imagine how the Democrats can be undermined even more than they already are.  Nevertheless, the fact that sixteen U.S. Senators have signed on to the bill as co-sponsors - including my own U.S. Senator, Cory Booker of New Jersey -  means that the issue has legs, even if the bill has no chance of even getting a vote in the Republican Senate.  It's an aspiration that inspires voters later more than a policy that could actually be pursued now.  And 53 percent of Americans support single-payer health care at this point.  If more Democrats get behind this, this could allow the party to return to its progressive base - a base it has refused to acknowledge for the past 45 years.

Martin O'Malley, meanwhile, has trumpeted the all-payer plan, in which all third parties pay the same rate for services from hospitals.  I've mentioned that before.  Unfortunately for O'Malley, not too many people have done so, and no one wants to listen to him when he brings it up.  Sometimes they tell him to shut up about it  - yes, John Dickerson, I'm talking about you!  I've looked at this idea, and it sounds like it could work, and it may even serve as a stepping stone to single-payer.  If O'Malley can find a way - any way - to get it into the debate, it could help him in the event that he runs for President against any of the Democrats who back Bernie on a single-payer "Medicare for all" policy.  It might even help O'Malley win the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.

If only John Dickerson will let him talk about it.