Open Letter to Obama

by Stephen Fleischman

You’re rounding the turn, heading down the home stretch, running neck and neck with the lead horse, so don’t blow it now.

You’ve got those super-delegates waiting in the paddock ready to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Your jaws. Your victory. This is your big chance, so don’t blow it now.

Change is a great slogan. It’s gotten you where you are. But it’s been co-oped, here and there, by other candidates, and it can’t stand alone. It’s a generality, or, as McCain would say a “platitude”. You’ve got to bite the bullet and get specific. I know specificity can get you into deep do-do, but you’ve got to do it. Just say those two little words; they’re gentle and non-aggressive. They won’t bite. “Single Payer”.

“Socialized Medicine!” they’ll scream. And hit you with everything they’ve got. They’ll call you a “communist”, or even worse, a social democrat. They did it to Dennis Kucinich who merely murmured “single payer” and they knocked him out of the box before he even got into it.

You’re a man of fortitude and can take anything they can throw at you.

You can show them that the word “socialized” doesn’t scare you into submission. You can show them that “Socialized Education”, made this country great. Not just grade school public education for every child, but the Land-Grant College system, for example. Every state in the Union has one as well as the territories and the District of Columbia. They were established way back in the 19th Century by the Morrill Act of 1862 and extended in 1890. Justin S. Morrill was the senior Senator from Vermont. The mission of these Acts was “to teach agriculture, military tactic, the mechanic arts, and home economics, not to the exclusion of classical studies, so that members of the working classes might obtain a practical college education”.

The mission of the Land-Grant Universities was further expanded by the Hatch Act of 1887 and the Smith-Lever Act of 1914 to provide federal funds to states to establish agricultural experiment stations and cooperative extension services, the sending of agents into rural areas to help bring the result of agricultural research to the end users.

Then, after World War II, there was the GI Bill of Rights. GI, for those too young to remember, stood for “Government Issue”, the returning World War II veteran. The Act paid for a GI’s entire education. It encouraged universities across the country to expand enrollment. The University of Michigan, for example, had fewer than 10,000 students prior to the war. In 1948 their enrollment was well over 30,000. Syracuse University saw their enrollment skyrocket from approximately 6,000 before the war to 19,000 students in 1947.

Another provision was known as the 52–20 clause. This enabled all former servicemen to receive $20 once a week for 52 weeks a year while they were looking for work. The GI Bill applied to all who served in the armed services, including African-Americans and women. Now, there’s a social(ist) program worth emulating.

It’s time to apply it to health as well as education. Most civilized countries around the world already do with univeral health care for their citizens. All we do is talk about it and try to devise schemes that fit into the profit-taking schemes of the health insurance industry. It’s not going to work.

So, Barack, just say those two little words. You may have to back away from some of your supporters. Get those mammoth health insurance companies off your back. Hillary knuckled under to them. You don’t have to do that. You need a landslide vote to frustrate those super-delegates. You need the people and the wind at your back to beat Hillary to the finish line and McCain to the White House. And those two little words will do it.

Remember, Barack, we’ve come a long way.

This country was born in genocide (the killing of the Indians) and grew up as a slaveocracy (use of the Africans). The myth that our founding fathers were liberal democrats is just that, a myth. They were rich, white, landowners (only landowners could vote) and most were also slave owners. Yes, they broke from colonialism and beat back the British. They wrote the constitution to suit their needs. But we lucked out. It was Thomas Jefferson (also a slaveholder) who put democracy into our constitution with the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments. Ex-slaves got the vote with the 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, women with the 19th Amendment in 1920.

It’s now time to extend those rights, to guarantee the health of the American people.

You must learn to walk in the footsteps of the great Americans this country has produced; not only men like Senator Justin S. Morrill, but also unionists and political activists like Eugene V. Debs, one of the founders of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), organizer of one of the first industrial unions in the United States, the American Railway Union. He ran for President of the United States five times as the Socialist Party of America candidate, in 1904, 1908, 1912, and 1920, the last time from prison where he was jailed for his part in the Pullman strike and received a million votes.

You must walk in the footsteps of the great John L. Lewis, organizer of the mine workers and the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) which established the United Steel Workers of America and helped organize millions of other industrial workers in the 1930s.

And, of course, you must walk in the footsteps of Abraham Lincoln who bucked the slave system and saved the Union.

Today, the Union must be saved again, and you’re the man to do it.