A lesson for Democrats

Democrats suck at terminology. Like, they’re really bad.

For all the things President Barack Obama has done right – most notably keeping Sarah Palin as far away from the White House as possible – he cannot coin a phrase to save his life.

Take health care, for instance.

The scream of “Death panels!” inevitably emerged on the Facebook page of our favorite good-natured Alaskan sweetheart in reference to the end-of-life counseling she had previously advocated.

“Obama lies, Grandma dies!” a sign exclaimed outside a New Hampshire town hall meeting.

And, of course, not to be outdone, Rush Limbaugh has drawn a nasty comparison by labeling the Obama health care logo, which features the ancient Greek symbol for health superimposed on Obama’s campaign logo, as “right out of Hitler’s playbook” because of his perceived resemblance of the Nazi swastika symbol.

And what does Obama have? Talks about “bending the cost curve” in reference to curbing the exponential growth of health care costs and “universal coverage.”

The president says, “The status quo on health care ... is threatening the financial stability of families, of businesses and of government.”

Bor-ing. Where’s the catchy buzz word in that?

The Republican response is that “Obamacare” will place a bureaucrat “between you and your doctor, denying you exactly what you need.”

“If you like your health care plan, you can keep it,” Obama tells us. “Obamacare: You Will Lose Your Current Insurance. Period. End of Story,” declares a headline on the Heritage Foundation blog, The Foundry.

Come on, Dems!

You can come up with better rhetoric than that. As any person well-conditioned in the art of verbal altercation knows, defining is half the battle. And, quite frankly, conservatives are kicking your ass in the definition department. All you need is a little fear mongering mixed with some hyperbole.

It’s time to step up, fight back and denominate as you see fit! They aren’t out-of-pocket health care costs; they’re bankruptcy inducers! Forget the uninsured – they’re the sorry victims of health care rationing! And bending the cost curve? No! We’re averting the impending doom that health care costs will havoc on our economy if we don’t do something! But we have to act now!

See, that wasn’t so hard now was it?

Of course, there’s always the option of denoting health care as what, in actuality, it is – a right.

In his column in Newsweek, Jonathan Alter writes, “Passage (of health care reform) would end the shameful era in our nation’s history when we discriminated against people for no other reason than that they were sick.”

Just as we as Americans have come to believe that we have the right to not starve to death, to not be denied emergency medical treatment, to get aid from the government as senior citizens and to not be discriminated against because of our race, gender or sexual orientation, we should come to see health care as a U.S. citizen right.

And, perhaps most importantly, it is ultimately up to the Democrats and Obama to label reform as such.