More On The Fight for Real Health Insurance Reform

Slinkerwink at Daily Kos wrote an excellent diary today about how we must not give up in the face of hard odds when it comes to the battle for meaningful health care reform.
What slinkerwink had to say at the top of her diary summed up a lot of what I have been thinking about the attitude of some that the battle has been lost.

I was absolutely disgusted to read the defeatism going on through the diaries over this weekend. Because that kind of defeatism is what the murder-by-spreadsheet industry wants the most right now. They want us to give up in the middle of the fight. They're happy right now when they see that kind of defeatism on the left.
I know we've had setbacks in this congressional fight for health care reform--but listen to me, if we don't fight the Blue Dogs, and get people to call their progressive members and the Tri-Caucus members to fight back against the Blue Dogs, we WILL never get a public option, and we won't certainly be on the road to single-payer.
Let me tell you this--it was never going to be this easy to pass health care reform with a strong public option. It's going to be an incredibly hard fight every single step of the way for it.

It's a great exhortation, but let me add a few things.
It wasn't easy for Martin Luther King Jr. and his followers to win the fight for civil rights and against segregation in the 1950's and 196o's. It wasn't easy for Mohandas K. Gandhi in his many-year fight for India's independence from the British empire.
It's not going to be easy to force passage of real health insurance reform in this country either. Presidents Harry S Truman and Bill Clinton both tried and failed in the face of intense campaigns of misinformation and fear from health insurance concerns and right-wing personalities both in politics and in the media.
Unlike in previous years, where there was never an effective response to these right-wing attacks, we now have very effective media means to counter the right-wing assaults.
First, there are widely-read blogs like Daily Kos and Firedoglake that have presented very well-written posts on healthcare issues and the current battle in Congress. Second, there is YouTube, where all it takes is a computer and a digital video camera to present a viewpoint that be seen and heard by many.
And third, there are those new social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook where you can have an even bigger impact.
I'm not saying the fight is going to be easy. President Obama has said many times that if this were an easy task, it would have been done years ago.
I'm not saying that the bill that reaches the president's desk will be a perfect one.
But this is a battle we can't afford to lose, both for us and for those struggling without health insurance (as well as those whose inferior plans don't allow them to get the care they need).
It's time to win the fight, and the pressure must continue on those who obstruct our way and who spread lies in the media.