Bird-dogging for Real Health Care for All in New Hampshire!

From: John Riley [mailto:jr273@columbia.edu]

This weekend's bird-dogging on HIV/AIDS and Single-Payer issues was
very successful. Our crew of 14, composed of ACT UP/NY & Philadelphia
members, Health GAP, PHIMG and Housing Works members went after
Edwards, Clinton, Huckabee, McCain, Guiliani, and others. Because of
the high media interest in the primary, asking questions
strategically was able to heighten the chances the candidate would
respond in front of crowds of hundreds or thousands in the audience,
reporters for papers, or in the case of Clinton townhall, the
viewership of CNN. CNN covered the Clinton townhall live for at least
part of it. We got newspaper coverage in the Manchester Union Leader
and other publications.

Single-Payer Bird-doggers got to ask 2 of 4 questions (see articles
below) at the Edwards Town Hall (one paper said 750 attended the
overflow event), and 2 of 14 at the Clinton event (the campaign
claimed 3500 in attendance).

One reporter for a NH paper noted following one of the townhalls,
something to the effect of, "I've never heard so many voters talking
about single-payer" The value of getting the word well known is
important, and to tie it to the faces of ordinary citizens, not just
a a champion politician that unfortunately can't win the democratic
nomination.

Both Edwards and Clinton explained the reason for their decision to
offer alternate plans to single-payer. Both also said they weren't
opposed to it. Clinton even said she would sign it in the unlikely
event it passed congress.

In the next few months we have an opportunity we won't have for
years. To get the word single-payer well known. It will serve all of
our subsequent work if we can make it better known in a smart
strategic way.

I think it is essential to prioritize the primaries in the following
month for Super Tuesday, especially in the NE, but everywhere there
is a Healthcare NOW or PNHP chapter and a primary. I think it would
be great if we could do more in-person bird dogging trainings and
possibly one or more conference call trainings.

These bird dogging opportunities are simple, legal and effective, but
require patience, determination and training to really work. Because
Healthcare NOW and PNHP are national organizations, both are in a
position where some focused effort could really raise public
awareness about the importance of single-payer. Bird-dogging as a
strategy only works, if we are persistent and have a national reach.
One-offs won't realize the power of it unless there are coordinated
one-offs. The advantage of doing this type of campaign is that the
candidates will only campaign in the state for a limited amount of
time. So the bird dogging just has to occur over a narrow amount of
time and not be an indefinate committment.

February 5th is a key date to work for as it is "Super Tuesday". On
that day primaries take place in the following 20 states:

State Type

Alabama primary
Alaska caucus
American Samoa primary
Arizona primary
Arkansas primary
California primary
Colorado caucus
Connecticut primary
Delaware primary
Democrats Abroad primary
Georgia primary
Idaho caucus
Illinois primary
Kansas caucus
Massachusetts primary
Minnesota caucus
Missouri primary
New Jersey primary
New Mexico caucus
New York primary
North Dakota caucus
Oklahoma primary
Tennessee primary
Utah primary

The rest of the primaries and caucuses will take place over the
course of the subsequent 4 months ending June 3rd. See the following
link for the current schedule.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Party_(United_States)_presidential_p
rimaries,_2008

********

http://www.unionleader.com/pda-article.aspx?articleId=c37c7768-6d82-42d3...
0-aa7c2ab662f4

Edwards says he's confident after Iowa results

By KRISTEN SENZ
Union Leader Correspondent
Sunday, Jan. 6, 2008

LEBANON - Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards shot hoops in
the Lebanon High School gymnasium yesterday with about 150 supporters
who were turned away from the main campaign event in the
over-capacity cafeteria.

After making brief remarks to the crowd in the gym, the former North
Carolina senator, wearing a dress shirt and tie, sank a few lay-ups
and made a couple of free throws from the foul line. The Lebanon High
basketball team had agreed to abandon the gym to accommodate voters
who couldn't fit into the cafeteria because of fire regulations.

With only three days left before the primary vote, Edwards painted
himself as the "underdog," a word he used about a dozen times during
his nearly two-hour visit to Lebanon, where he promised to fight
against corporate interests to strengthen the middle class.

"We are going to stand up to the establishment that's standing
between you and what you're entitled to," he said. "But we don't have
the money. I am not the money candidate. I need you."

Before the senator arrived, Lebanon Fire Capt. Jon Sterling turned
away campaign canvassers and media members for a time until a 3-foot
perimeter around the edges of the cafeteria could be cleared.
Edwards' speech in the cafeteria was then broadcast to voters in the
gym.

Edwards, who brought two of his children, Emma Claire and Jack, and
his parents, Wallace and Bobbie, said he felt confident the momentum
he built in Iowa, where he nudged past Sen. Hillary Clinton, would
carry him through the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday.

"What we saw happen in Iowa two days ago is going to happen here in
New Hampshire," he said. "The people of Iowa said, 'We're not going
to have an auction, we're going to have an election."

Edwards fielded two questions about his proposed health-care plan,
which one voter called a "patchwork plan." Defending his proposal,
Edwards said his plan could end up being a single-payer system,
depending on what the American people choose.

"What I propose covers every single American," he said. "The fact
that it's not a single-payer does not make it a patchwork plan."

Edwards emphasized that his administration would not "replace
corporate Republicans with corporate Democrats," an apparent jab at
rival Clinton, and said his deep, personal belief in the need for
change would enable him to get things done in Washington.

"You can tell the difference between someone who feels this inside,
in their soul, and someone who thinks it's good politics," he said.

http://www.indypendent.org/2008/01/06/the-indy-in-nh-edwards-visits-leba...
nh/

The Indypendent

nyc.indymedia.org

The Indy in NH: Edwards Visits Lebanon, NH
January 6, 2008 | Posted in IndyBlog | Email this article

By Steven Wishnia

LEBANON, NH-John Edwards gives a speech that would make many leftists
proud. Speaking at the Lebanon High School cafeteria here Saturday
afternoon, he said "fight entrenched corporate interests," "powerful
monied interests," and variations thereof almost as much as Barack
Obama says "change" and "hope."

Edwards runs through several pet riffs on economic inequality: $40
billion in profits for ExxonMobil last year and a $200 million salary
for the CEO of a health-insurance company, contrasted with 47 million
Americans with no health insurance, 37 million in poverty, and
200,000 homeless veterans. And alluding to Franklin D. Roosevelt's
response to the "economic royalists" who despised him, he declares,
"I welcome their hatred."

That's a promising beginning, but when Edwards was pressed on the
specifics of his health-care plan by two voters-one a woman whose
chronically ill husband's insurance company won't pay for home health
aides, one a man whose HIV-positive friend had his anti-wasting
medication cut off after it was "dropped from the formulary"-he
refused to support a single-payer system,
such as Rep. John Conyers' bill to extend Medicare to everyone. "I
commit to my plan," he told the woman. He argues that it's
politically impossible to enact a single-payer plan without risking
spending 15 years in political gridlock, and his plan would give
people the choice of buying government coverage and limit the abuses
of private insurance.

"The problem with it is that it can create a two-tier system, and the
Republicans will cut the government plan," responded John Riley, a
53-year-old biologist from Manchester, the man with the HIV-positive
friend.

"Why not go for single-payer? If he really wants to challenge the big
insurance companies, he should come out and say that," said Eric
Sawyer, 53, a carpenter from upstate New York staying with his
in-laws in Nashua. "Don't say that it's unachievable, educate the
people and lead." Sawyer said his father has had gangrene three
times. Medicare cut off payments for therapy before the wound had
fully healed, so it became reinfected, he said, and his parents'
supplemental insurance "doesn't pay a dime."

Among the more than 200 people who turned out for the Edwards rally,
health care and the war in Iraq appeared to be the top two issues,
with the environment and education not far behind. "It's criminal,"
said Ernie LaBombard, 57, a carpenter from Hanover. "We're killing
people around the world, and our lower classes are being used as
cannon fodder. "And health care," adds his wife, Priscilla Geoghegan,
56, a teacher. She also worries that the cost of college is
leaving graduates so debt-ridden that they can't afford to become teachers.

Lebanon, a town of about 13,000 people a few miles inland from the
Connecticut River, is historically working-class, but is now catching
some of the overspill from the gentrification of Hanover, five miles
to the north and the site of Dartmouth College. Hanover was
relatively quiet, as the Dartmouth students are just beginning to
return for the spring semester, except for a group of about eight
students holding up Obama signs on the corner of Main Street, across
from the snow-covered village green.

What is Obama's appeal, one was asked; what makes you stand on a
corner in 20-something degree weather for him? "He's the candidate
that can unite this country and can best move the country forward in
a united manner," he said.

"I'm not authorized to talk more." Obama volunteers have "strict
guidelines" not to talk to the press, the group said-even to the
extent of not revealing information about the senator's campaign
appearances in the area.

In both towns, the NFL playoffs were on more barroom and
student-union TVs than the debates Saturday night.

The people watching the Redskins-Seahawks and Steelers-Jaguars games
might have been better off. The Republicans continued their contest
to see who could be the most anti-immigrant, with Mitt Romney lacing
into Rudy Giuliani for not turning in illegal immigrants who sent
their kids to public schools in the city, and Mike Huckabee
contending that if we built the Empire State Building in 14 months,
we could finish a wall on the Mexican border in a year and a half. On
health care, they repeated the mantra that the market will solve
everything.
"Don't turn the pharmaceutical companies into the big bad guys," said
Romney. "The market will work." He added that most people who don't
have health insurance have chosen to go without it. "We have 47
million people saying 'I'm not gonna play.'"

The bluntest statement of the night came from Fred Thompson. Asked if
he was bothered by high oil-company profits, he said no. On the other
hand, the GOP has grudgingly accepted that global warming exists,
although their solutions for it usually include nuclear energy.

On the Democratic side, the most annoying people were the ABC
moderators. One asked a question about "change" that seemed designed
to provoke a pissing match between Hillary Clinton and Obama. It
definitely irked Clinton.

The other asked Clinton why she thought the polls has rated her low
on "likeability." Another question was about whether "relative youth"
would disqualify a candidate-essentially inquiring, "Would you you
say that Obama is a 46-year-old pisher, not yet tall enough to
urinate in the maelstrom of politics?" To their credit, neither
Clinton, Edwards, nor Bill Richardson took the
bait.

The whole dialogue about "change" and "experience" is second only to
the it's- over-before-it-started horse-race coverage as the most
puerile aspect of the campaign. What is "change"? If I wrote a
best-selling book, that would definitely change my life, but having a
stroke that destroyed my verbal faculties would be "change" too. And
while no sane person would hire Michael Brown to oversee hurricane
preparedness, no humane person would have Henry Kissinger run foreign
policy, despite his experience.

Richardson probably talked the most sense: "You need experience to know how
to change things."

The New Mexico governor also was the only one of the four to advocate
immediate withdrawal from Iraq. Obama uttered the dread phrase
"phased redeployment," adding that we need "to send a signal to
Iraq's government that we are not going to be there in perpetuity."

Meanwhile, the people at the Edwards rally were concerned about
health care, jobs, college debt, global warming, and getting out of
Iraq. "We need to get out of there immediately," said Jose Vargas,
50, an environmental consultant from West Lebanon. But Juanita
Paynter, a 47-year-old Army veteran from Lebanon, said that if we
leave before we've trained Iraqi troops, "we'll be back over there in
another two or three years." Both of them would prefer a single-payer
health plan, but would settle for an Edwards-style plan that would at
least make health care universal.

Some people leaned toward Obama. Bryan, 25, a Midwesterner working in
Vermont who wants to be a farmer, said he found Edwards and Obama's
environmental ideas "pretty even," but liked Obama's initiatives to
encourage new farmers. Clinton, he said, "took a big chunk of money
from Monsanto."

Steven Wishnia will be covering the New Hampshire primary for The
Indypendent. He is a better bass player than Mike Huckabee.

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5 Responses to "The Indy in NH: Edwards Visits Lebanon, NH"
bardonaut Says:
January 6th, 2008 at 8:34 pm

So this article questions why Edwards' universal healthcare plan is
not single-payer, but doesn't mention that Obama's plan isn't even
universal? Trying not to disabuse those still of the misguided and
very false notion that Obama supports universal single-payer?

One wonders how independent you truly are.
Anonymous Says:
January 6th, 2008 at 10:51 pm

I was disappointed by both Edwards and Obama on their health care
positions. Obama said if he were to start from scratch he would
choose universal health care but because millions already have
employer paid insurance (he didn't mention how woeful the coverage
can be), he would do universal coverage. The guy next me immediately
said, "oh why doesn't he just do universal-the health care system is
in shambles."

Is Edwards for real?
Raoul O'Connell Says:
January 7th, 2008 at 1:06 am

Dear Friends on the Left:

I talked to Elizabeth Edwards at an event and told her many of my
friends on the left stick with Kucinich because he supports single
payer and John does not. Elizabeth explained that John's plan has a
"path to single payer" and it certainly does.

John's plan calls for private insurers to compete with a federal plan
(essentially Medicare writ large) in regional markets organized by
the federal government. To compete every plan MUST cover mental
health, no pre-existing conditions, preventive care etc. They must
provide exactly what members of congress get, what Elizabeth gets. If
they can do it for less than the federal plan, they get the region.
If they cannot, the federal plan wins.

Medicare operates at 6% overhead and does not have to worry about the
abomination of profit on health care. If private insurers cannot
compete (and they likely cannot) the federal plans wins and you move
closer to a single payer plan. Ask Paul Krugman of the New York
Times. John's plan is the best. I told Elizabeth I'd let my Kucinch
friends know John's plan is designed to lead to single payer.

John keeps emphasizing he's a fighter. The plan described above will
force a major shake up of the health insurance industry and they will
fight it tooth and nail. If anyone can fight that fight it's John -
he was every corporate attorneys worst nightmare in his days as a
trial lawyer. Now imagine if he walked in and said "Ok, Blue Cross,
Health Net, Humana, Kaiser, close up shop and go home. You're all out
of business. The feds are now the only game in town." Does that
strike you as a winning game plan? It sounds like a plan for failure
to me.

Oh yeah, did you know Obama's health plan isn't even universal? Why
did Kucinich send his people over to that guy?

WORDS TO FELLOW PROGRESSIVES ON OBAMA:

Obama's health plan does not cover 15,000,000 people, he supports
nuclear power, he supports coal, he has taken money from every major
corporate interest. He has been groomed for this race by the
Democratic Leadership Committee (DLC), the right wing (Liberman wing)
of the Democratic Party, since his days in state government. That's
how he got that plum spot at the convention for his career making
speech. He has voted for every war funding bill, he voted to confirm
Condoleeza Rice, an architect of the war he decried as the "wrong
war," as opposed to just plain wrong. He does not speak about the
plight of the poor. He ignores the disproportionate share of hardship
borne by the African American community to the point where even
supporters like Jessie Jackson write editorials to call attention to
his sad disinterest in the conditions of the many who live in
poverty. Ralph Nader has fallen behind John, saying Obama is "too
conciliatory to corporate power."

(Chris Matthews said to Ralph, shocked, "are you saying Obama is not
a progressive?" and Ralph, equally confused said "why would you call
him a progressive?")

Why did Kucinich send his young well intentioned supporters in Iowa
to Obama? On a personal grudge? Where did his principles go? We all
know John and Kucinich's policies were much more in line. Does
Kucinich now believe in coal and nuclear power? John stands for
complete federal financing of elections, Obama does not. John calls
for no nuclear power and total nuclear disarmament. Did Kucinich
forget that?

It is a major victory of the progressive movement that college
educated young adults see sexism and racism as an anachronism - it's
almost unintelligible to them. They are also, unfortunately, part of
a generation who've been politically decontextualized by corporate
media and the war to remove critical thinking from our testing based
schools. They think an African American who speaks about "hope,"
"reconciliation" and "bringing people together" - in contrast to
years of silly in-fighting by old school folks in Washington -
tarnished by those awful 60's and 70's - is the way to go. His total
lack of substance on policy is meaningless to them because they
respond more readily to images and slogans. I volunteer for John and
I can say anything I want to anyone. Obama's folks cannot speak to
the press because you can only go so far on platitudes. Perhaps they
don't want to embarrass these kids.

Progressives have a massive responsibility. Washington DC did not
invite Martin Luther King to sit at the table to discuss civil
rights. African Americans and white activists suffered privation,
persecution, torture, lynching and death to desegregate the South.
That was, and continues to be a fight. Did the robber barons open
their conference rooms to dicuss labor conditions? No they hired
private armies to shoot demonstrators. Will we honor what they fought
for? The press has forgotten. Will we?

The best thing the left has is its dead-on criticism of our political
system. The differences between Democrats and Republicans is played
up by our media to give the impression of rigorous democratic debate
while both parties do the bidding of their corporate paymasters. Mr.
Obama's vision of Democrats and Republicans sharing a Coke misses the
point. Our elected officials, be they republican or democrat, no
matter how well intentioned, cannot do the work of the people while
the big money, corporations and lobbyists bankroll the show. John has
never taken money from lobbyists and PACS, unlike Obama, who did when
he ran for State Senate and the Senate. John gets our critique, it
makes sense to him, it allows everything to fall in place for him. He
get the critique, and he has taken on our agenda.

Norman Solomon, co-founder of F.A.I.R., Fairness and Accuracy in
Media, producer of the MSNBC Donahue show cancelled for its anti-Iraq
War stance, calls John Edwards the "most progressive American
presidential candidate in the last 50 years."

I largely think Democratic politicians suck. Corporate democrats
ravaged welfare, gave us DOMA, bombed Belgrade, gave us NAFA. etc. I
listen to the substance of the John Edwards campaign and now I am I
die hard. The Republicans are terrified of him, cause he can take his
populist message and southern drawl to red states and win. Even
Huckabee knows this message sells. The American people are truly
worried about the future. We have an enormous opportunity here.

It's the issues, not the messenger. We progressives have the
critique, we understand the political system, we know the issues that
matter. Follow the issues. They will lead you to John Edwards. We who
care about social and economic justice, the environment, peace and
total nuclear disarmament finally have a candidate. Yes, he's a white
southerner. But no one has articulated the things we care about as
accurately, effectively and passionately as he. It's time to hit the
streets for our issues - with a John Edwards sign in hand. (Oh yeah,
Mike Moore agrees too.)

BTW, Rasmussen polling today has Edwards up 9 points nationally since
Dec. 29th, with Clinton down -7 and Obama up only 1 for this outcome:

1/6/08 36% 25% 23%

--
-John Riley