If you’ve been watching the Democratic National Convention, you now know the shape of America.
The nation consists largely of uninsured people struggling to pay the health care bills of their sick kids, people whose homes have been snatched from them by hard-hearted bankers, a massive army of the unemployed, women discriminated against in the workplace, greedy lawyers in big firms (plaintiffs’ lawyers excepted) who refuse to become community workers, rich people unwilling to pay their fair share of taxes, and returning veterans denied benefits by none other than John McCain.
And teachers eager to do their best for our kids, but adamantly opposed to letting parents pick the schools that are best for their children – or allowing the best teachers to receive merit additions to the union pay scale.
Elect Hillary Clinton and these problems will be solved by taxing the rich and using the savings generated by a retreat from Iraq. But since she’s not available, do the next best thing and elect the man who will carry out the Hillary agenda — no, not Bill Clinton, but Barack Obama.
Obama will bring justice to the downtrodden, heal the sick, feed the poor and end war. Fortunately for America, this is the world as seen only by the very liberal left.
Let’s take a look at a few facts:
Yes, the nation’s health care system is not what it should be, in part because government regulations have intervened between doctor and patient and converted what once was a respectful relationship into an adversarial one.
Yes, health care costs are escalating, in part because new technologies and medicines that improve the quality of life are costly to develop. And, yes, things would be a lot better if Americans who do not get insurance from their employers were treated equally for tax purposes with those who do, as John McCain suggests.
But in the end, 85 percent of Americans do have health insurance coverage. Of the 45.7 million people who are uninsured, the Wall Street Journal reports that 25 percent are eligible for Medicaid but have not signed up, and 54 percent are between the ages of 18 and 34, a group heavily weighted with people who, right or wrong, probably see little need for coverage.
Can things get better with sensible policies? Sure. Are they likely to get better with the sort of care produced by government-run systems such as Canada’s, whose citizens flock across the border to beat the long waits at home by using our health care facilities or Britain’s, where waits for proper treatment can extend for months and even years.
Then there is housing. Again, there is no doubt that foreclosures are all-too common, although to hear the Democrats tell it, we will soon see Hoovervilles springing up in the nation’s parks. But the great majority of Americans are paying their mortgages regularly and living in houses worth far more than when they were purchased. And thanks to some very good bipartisan work by Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and the Democratic chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, Barney Frank, the government is doing a good bit to ease the plight of those temporarily caught in the credit crunch. The sort of bipartisan work in which John McCain has specialized for decades and in which Barack Obama has never, ever engaged.
There is also no question that the job market has weakened, but neither is there any question that it has not sunk to the levels of past recessions. After all, the economy did grow at an annual rate of 3.3 percent in the last quarter.
Inflation in food and energy prices is hurting American consumers, but price increases are nothing like those unleashed by former President Jimmy Carter, now a superdelegate in Denver.
Karlyn Bowman, the American Enterprise poll analyst who has her finger on the pulse of America, tells me that “job satisfaction remains very high. Most workers don’t fear losing their jobs. … Seventy-six percent in a new Harris poll said things are on the right track in their personal lives.”
But the number of Americans who say their employer has laid off workers in the past six months is up, which must produce some anxiety, and even though 76 percent feel things are on the right track in their personal lives, only 18 percent think that of the nation.
Which gives Obama an opportunity to persuade the undecideds – some 30 percent of all voters – that he is the agent of change for whom they have been waiting.
Examiner columnist Irwin Stelzer is a senior fellow and director of the Hudson Institute’s Center for Economic Studies.
