This is ProgressiveTokyo blogging from November 2010, and yes I`m still here in Tokyo.
I`ve been watching the mid-term elections from over here and I`m hoping to add some perspective to the massive landslide victory across all the states for the Republican party.
Who would have thought that only 2 years ago we were dancing in the streets, laughing, glorious in our victory after 8 long years (more so when we count from the Republican revolution of 1994) of insanity. We had won, the world was at our fingertips.
We had worked hard, making phone calls (for many of us here well into the night due to the time differences), organized voter registrations, knocked on doors all in the hope of Change.
But then came the long hard slog of 2009 and the disillusionment of many of us on the left.
Looking back I think that the largest factor of our current woes was when the Public Option was dropped from the Health care reform bill. After good faith negotiations with the republicans and conservative democrats seemed to garner no support, finally as a last ditch attempt to get a bill passed the public option was removed and a highly flawed bill including the so-called "co-ops" (many of which have since been merged with the mega insurers) was passed and signed by the President.
Many of us on the left were disgusted and many promised to fight the "blue dog" Democracs in Primaries.
Meanwhile the flawed health care bill began to go into effect with no noticeable for most Americans, especially those who were uninsured and under insured.
Republicans began to wail that the "reform" was a complete failure (this failure was definitely attributable to them, but the true progressives and the President never fought for it so the blame fell to those in power) and began an aggressive offensive campaign against the true progressives who had failed in their negotiations.
At the same time many on the left began aggressively working against the conservative Democrat incumbents who had voted against the public option (and other progressive causes). This split the field and after many primary defeats of conservative Democrats in borderline red states we had virtually unknown progressive candidates going up against virtually unknown Republicans in the general election.
With a split base and an unenthusiastic Liberal grassroots the Republican machine went to work as it had in 1994. And this morning we are all feeling the effects. We lost our chance, and now its too late.
Today President Obama has to now deal with a borderline Majority in the House and a 1 seat deficit in the Senate. Any hopes of change we had are gone, where 2 years ago we could negotiate with the Right at our leisure, now it is a political fact. Will President Obama survive the 2012 election (or even the Primary) while once unthinkable is now a serious worry for the White House.
I wish I could go back and tell all of you to work a bit harder so this would not become a reality. I know all of us now wish we had. Maybe just one more phone call. Maybe just a bit more effort on all sides and we could have changed this outcome. Now it is too late.
This is ProgressiveTokyo, signing out.
Update: My wife`s contractions are currently 3 times an hour so if I have to take off suddenly and cant respond to comments Im sorry. But Ive got bigger things going on.