Appearing as a guest on Friday's PoliticsNation, MSNBC's Melissa Harris-Perry asserted that Republican opposition to ObamaCare was "creating a faulty levee system in our health care" as she tried to argue that the ObamaCare disaster should not be referred to as President Obama's political equivalent of Hurricane Katrina. Host Al Sharpton posed:
You know, Melissa, you live in New Orleans. You lived through Katrina. ... To compare this, Katrina was about a President, when people were suffering on live television, that didn't come in. They're comparing it to a President that saw people suffering that tried to do something and is trying to do something about it. It is absolutely outrageous.
Harris-Perry began her response:
Yeah, I mean, look, here is the comparison that works. Hurricane Katrina is like GOP resistance to ObamaCare. And here's how. In the context of a Hurricane Katrina disaster, there was a disaster, a natural disaster caused by weather and storms and wind surges. Right, but the big issue were the federal levee failure, which was a failure brought on by a lack of investment in particularly poor and black communities.
And then, even after that structural failure, a failure on the part of the federal government to use the resources and capacity that it had to save poor people, old people, and people of color, that's what the Katrina disaster is beyond the storm.
She concluded:
In this case, the GOP resistance to health care reform is similarly creating a faulty levee system in our health care creating a circumstance where our under-investment makes everyone vulnerable. And in the midst of a disaster that is brewing, a refusal of the federal government to go in and help, once again, poor people, the elderly and people of color. So on that, they're right, it is like-
Below is a transcript of the relevant exchange from the Friday, November 15, PoliticsNation on MSNBC:
AL SHARPTON: You know, Melissa, you live in New Orleans. You lived through Katrina. ... To compare this, Katrina was about a President, when people were suffering on live television, that didn't come in. They're comparing it to a President that saw people suffering that tried to do something and is trying to do something about it. It is absolutely outrageous.
MELISSA HARRIS-PERRY: Yeah, I mean, look, here is the comparison that works. Hurricane Katrina is like GOP resistance to ObamaCare. And here's how. In the context of a Hurricane Katrina disaster, there was a disaster, a natural disaster caused by weather and storms and wind surges.
SHARPTON: And levees.
HARRIS-PERRY: Right, but the big issue were the federal levee failure, which was a failure brought on by a lack of investment in particularly poor and black communities.
SHARPTON: Right.
HARRIS-PERRY: And then, even after that structural failure, a failure on the part of the federal government to use the resources and capacity that it had to save poor people, old people, and people of color, that's what the Katrina disaster is beyond the storm.
SHARPTON: Right.
HARRIS-PERRY: In this case, the GOP resistance to health care reform is similarly creating a faulty levee system in our health care creating a circumstance where our under-investment makes everyone vulnerable. And in the midst of a disaster that is brewing, a refusal of the federal government to go in and help, once again, poor people, the elderly and people of color. So on that, they're right, it is-
SHARPTON: So they're right about the analogy, Congresswoman (Bass), they're just wrong about who's the one that is doing the damage in the analogy, and that would be them, not the President.