The MassLive article, U.S. Senate candidate Marisa DeFranco takes on healthcare, immigration and Elizabeth Warren, was recommended to me by reader BillM.

I’ll pick out just a few items to emphasize for my own reasons, but there are many more excellent points in the article.

“A lot of people will say to me that their grandparents came legally, and why can’t immigrants do that today?” DeFranco said. “But what they don’t realize is that back then there was an open border policy. Now you can only come through an immediate relative or through business. There are asylum cases, but those are much more complicated. It is not easy or cheap to become a U.S. citizen, although the process does have its fair points such as a citizenship option following five years with a green card.”

The reason why I like the above quote is that it demonstrates a point I have been making about running for office.  When you support a certain point of view and you get some flak for it, you don’t just try to hide what you believe.  You explain why you have that point of view, and you try to educate people as to that viewpoint’s merits.  How will a politician ever get to lead the country in a better direction, if that candidate always backs away from promoting any idea that the public does not already like?

One example she cited where more of a fight would have been beneficial is the healthcare overhaul and its exclusion of a public option which would have made health insurance companies compete with the federal government.

“The mandate to buy coverage from the health insurance companies, which is a Republican idea, is the crux of the problem,” DeFranco said. “I’m glad we did something on the national level but the Democrats really capitulated on the public option and that was a mistake. They started with the public option as their top marker. It’s classic negotiation 101, you negotiate high to end up at middle or high ground of where you want to end. They should have started with single-payer and they would have ended up with a public option. Poll after poll showed that 70 percent of people wanted a public option. It’s just an option. If the insurance companies are really behind their free market mentality, then operate in a market. And if the government is your competitor and you’re so much better than the government, compete.”

My reason for choosing the above quote is because it gets to one of my major disappointments with President Obama.  I am not disappointed because President Obama did not accomplish something that I had hoped he would.  My disappointment comes from his inability to even negotiate well.

Let me emphasize one of the sentences from that last DeFranco comment.

If the insurance companies are really behind their free market mentality, then operate in a market. And if the government is your competitor and you’re so much better than the government, compete.

I had thoughts like this at the time of the health care debate and at any time Republicans back away from their purported belief in “free markets.”  I kept thinking then, and I keep thinking now, “Why couldn’t Obama have made that point?”  Even if making that point wouldn’t have won the argument, he would have educated the people to start thinking about that point.  Because of Obama’s continual capitulations without even trying the people have still no inkling that there is a counter idea to what the Republicans said.

If a politician is ever going to modify people’s opinions, when is the right time to start?  I claim that the right time is each and every time that politician speaks in public.  I cannot see the point of waiting for a better time.  Changing people’s opinions takes repetition.  If you wait until you need the opinion to be changed, it is too late.  You have already lost the battle before you even begin to fight.

I raise these points because this is also my fear about Elizabeth Warren.  She hasn’t even gotten the nomination yet, and she is already showing the weaknesses that Obama at least kept hidden until after he was elected.  In Obama’s case we can make the famous Bush claim, “Fool me once, shame on you.”

In Elizabeth Warren’s case, “Fool me twice, shame on me.”  Bush of course couldn’t quite get the words out right.

I wonder if liberals and progressives accept a Democratic politician’s silence on some of our issues because of our distaste of how the Republican candidates throw read meat issues at their base.

I think it is important to differentiate two different things that we may mistake for two sides of the same coin. One is the Republican’s behavior which I believe may be pandering to their base by saying things the candidate  doesn’t even believe.  This is not the same thing as a Democrat saying something that the party base likes when it is a firmly held belief of the politician.

Isn’t it sad that when we don’t like the Republicans saying outrageous things on the right of the political spectrum we take that as a lesson that we shouldn’t say what we truly believe on the left side of the spectrum.