2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: Imagine if our civil rights champions had the same disdain for pragmatism as some BS supporters have [View all]DefenseLawyer
(11,101 posts)But I understand that your goal is to defend Hillary Clinton's dismissal of single payer healthcare as a goal. And that's okay. I am certainly not suggesting that the civil rights movement happened overnight or that there was no "pragmatism" in the movement. Nor am I suggesting that the work of Marshall and others in the courts didn't play an important role in the movement (although it was not in any sense coordinated politically with congressional leadership or the White House as it happened) That being said, if you are going to compare changing the healthcare system legislatively to changing civil rights law legislatively, you have picked possibly the worst example since the New Deal that you could pick. The legislation was not "let's do a little where we can", "let's find political consensus". The Civil Rights Act was a MAJOR dramatic shift in federal law. It was not passed by the people who said "this will never, ever pass!" I do understand that you're trying to rationalize Secretary Clinton's current political position on single payer healthcare, but likening it to the civil rights movement was a bit of a stretch. Good try though.