| Is it any wonder Democrats are losing ground with independents, while at the same time the enthusiasm of our own base weakens?
The traditional media, preferring politics and process over policy, have done a terrible job explaining what health insurance reform is. Few outside of the land of political junkies actually know what a public option is; fewer still know it's less expensive than not having one.
Harry Reid's senate discipline and leadership have been pitiful. And while I favor the President's idea to have this be a thing born from the legislative branch, there have been too many signals from the White House recently that they are willing to label passable weak tea "reform" and call it a day.
Do they not see that if they pass something that is not meaningful, it will not have a meaningful impact on the lives of ordinary Americans?
And if that happens, Americans will retreat into "All Politicians Are the Same" mode. Independents will be for the GOP's taking, and the Democratic base will feel, rightly, that they've been played.
The health insurance system in this country is an unqualified disaster.
Barack Obama and Democrats explicitly ran on fixing it.
Voters like leaders and strength and conviction and results.
Republicans understand this almost intuitively. Why Democrats have a harder time getting it is, in all sincerity, a very great mystery to me.
If at the end of the day, after all the theatre and vote engineering and face saving, a law emerges that Americans are required to purchase insurance from the same old murder-by-spreadsheet oligarchy, it will actually be a worse outcome than the status quo.
I, and the millions of other people that worked to propel Democrats into a supermajority in government, don't make money doing what we do. Our time is valuable, and, at least in my case, I would much rather spent it among the worlds of nature and letters than in keeping an eye on the Villagers.
If sixty Senate Democrats, a huge House majority, and the President of the United States cannot pass meaningful health insurance reform, Rahm, no amount of checking off legislative achievements is going to help your boss and those down ticket of him in November 2010.
That this even needs to be spelled out amazes me, and yes, shames me. |
