Look, Ma! The Democrats are Holding Their Own Rally!

they have a bus and flags and placards too!

Democrats Go on the Road to Revive Health Care Push

Mitch Stewart, the national director of Organizing for America, and Rep. Ed Perlmutter stopped in Denver last week as part of an 11-city bus tour for President Obama's health care plan. Chris Schneider/ New York Times

ALBUQUERQUE — Democrats were at the dais on a recent evening outside the National Hispanic Cultural Center here going on about health care and the need for change when a man in the crowd gave a lusty, ragged shout: “No compromise!”

He was not an opponent of health care overhaul, but a firm believer whose shout, occasionally taken up by others, was emblematic of the anxious and sometimes crotchety reception Democrats are receiving on a cross-country bus trip.

Ellen Cahill, below at right, and Stephanie Simpson, above right, at a health care rally at North High School in Denver last week. Chris Schneider/The New York Times

The 11-city tour to rally the faithful for President Obama’s health care plan has been tapping the party’s inner Hamlet. How much should liberal Democrats compromise with Republicans, and with moderates in their own ranks? How strongly should they cling to the notion of a public-option health provider? And perhaps most importantly, can people like Ilene Weiss be roused, as she was during Mr. Obama’s campaign for the White House last year, to get out and volunteer?

“It’s a pep rally,” said Ms. Weiss a 53-year-old public school teacher as she arrived, feeling, she said, a little discouraged about where the health care debate is going and what might happen in Congress. “I’m hoping this will pep me up.”

At many of the town-hall-style meetings on health care held in Congressional districts across the country in recent weeks, democracy was served up at its most raw and confrontational. The bus tour has been different, with Democrats mostly talking politely among themselves — a modern-day version of the parlor game “telephone,” where one person whispers in the ear of a neighbor, communicating a message they both hope will come out in coherent fashion at the end.

“We feel the most important thing we can do is have these one-on-one conversations,” said Mitch Stewart, the executive director of Organizing for America, a group that grew out of Mr. Obama’s presidential campaign and is conducting the tour this week.

Mr. Stewart said the goal at every event is to inform, but also to enlist new volunteers armed with health-care talking points for phone-banks or door-to-door persuasion in coming weeks. It is a mirror, he said, of Mr. Obama’s operation during the presidential campaign, but this time organized around an idea, not a candidate.

“We’re going to continue the same sort of ground tactics that frankly aren’t extremely sexy, and are thankless and overlooked, but that we think will make a difference,” Mr. Stewart said. “That is, person-to-person, neighbor-to-neighbor, friend-to-friend conversation.”

Pillars of support for the Democrats in their health care plans have narrowed. In Congress, party leaders have said they may have to go it alone on a health care package with few, if any, Republican votes. Approval of Mr. Obama’s handling of health care has also eroded significantly among independent voters, according to polls in late June and mid-August by ABC News/Washington Post, making the Democrats ever-more-dependent on their base.

But in interviews at rallies in four cities where the big blue health care bus stopped in recent days — Albuquerque, Denver, Phoenix and St. Louis — it was also clear that many people supporting Mr. Obama’s plan were not quite sure how to help him get it through Congress. It was equally unclear how many attendees, beyond cheering and waving signs in front of the news cameras greeting the bus, might be mobilized.

Danielle Butler, for example, a graphic designer from Phoenix, said she received an e-mail message from Organizing for America inviting her to attend the rally, and came there to support the president even though health insurance has never been a big issue for her.

“I volunteered at his campaign and just really want to stand behind Obama’s initiatives,” said Ms. Butler, 29. “I support the changes that he wants to bring to our country,” she added. Ms. Butler said that when the rally was over, she felt charged up, but had not learned much new about health care.

Individual motives for attending were also diverse. At a rally at North High School in Denver that drew about 1,500 people, Martha Sullivan was struggling, and failing, to attach a sign that read “Single Payer,” to a chain-link fence in the parking lot. Ms. Sullivan said she was motivated by faith — the United Church of Christ where she worships has urged its members to support health care for all.

“I think people who have Christian beliefs should stand up and say, ‘This is what Jesus would have wanted,’ ” said Ms. Sullivan, 59.

Other people were stoked by personal causes that seemed in some cases only peripheral to a broader societal debate.

“I’m out here if it will help one more kid get medication,” said Johari Ade-Green, 58, of Denver, who was holding a sign with a picture of her grandson, Zumante Lucero, who died in July at age 9 from complications of asthma. Her grandson had insurance under Medicaid and Social Security, she said, but through a mix-up was denied medication.

LaDonna Appelbaum, 42, a small-business owner who attended a rally in St. Louis on Sunday evening with her husband, Tom, said she worries whether a complex health care debate can engage young people the way Mr. Obama’s candidacy did last year.

“They need to be involved in this, but that’s hard to do, because what 21-year-old worries about needing health care?” she said.

Exactly what message to communicate to one’s neighbors and friends upon leaving the rallies — as organizers constantly pressed attendees to do — was another uncertainty.

Laura Jones, 55, a homemaker and mother of two from St. Louis, said her own personal message is blunt: Old solutions based on free markets and capitalism no longer work, she said, and government must play a bigger role.

“I keep telling my friends, ‘Adam Smith is dead,’ ” Ms. Jones said, referring to the 18th-century philosopher who famously taught that the invisible hand of the market works best.

“Get over it,” she said. “We have to deal with today’s problems with today’s answers.”

Some protesters waving their signs on the sidelines at the bus-tour events said they felt excluded. But T. C. Campbell, 68, a retired pilot from the suburbs of Denver, who carried a sign that said, “Hands off my health care,” (with two ink handprints for the word “hands,”) said he thought it was better to be outside trying to make his own points than inside among the already firmly convinced.

“I wouldn’t be heard in there,” Mr. Campbell said.

Malcolm Gay contributed reporting from St. Louis, and Paul Giblin from Phoenix.

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below is a copy of a handout in the healthcare reform event in a clark county, nevada community event last week-end…

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it’s all too clear. every citizen and legal resident should have not just the privilege, but THE RIGHT to have medical care provided by their government. our country is the only industrialized nation in  the world that does not have universal health care. each one of us knows someone who is seriously ill with sky-high medical bills that are compromising their finances and each of us knows someone who is unemployed and won’t be able to afford to pay for insurance due to a pre-existing condition. could we all think more of the human factor and less about politics? healthcare for everyone is a good thing. that’s one thing that government should give to its people.  if government-funded healthcare is as evil and inefficient as it’s being portrayed by those against it, then why is the rest of the world not wanting to abolish their own nationalized healthcare systems?