I've been so frustrated today, listening to everyone on MSNBC (even David Shuster, who usually appears to have a brain) go on and on about health care. Actually, they don't say anything, they just ask questions:
Is President Obama's health care plan in jeopardy?
Does health care reform still have any chance of passing if Coakley loses?
Is health care reform on the brink of defeat after a year of Democratic fighting?
But it's not about health care! Health care reform -- however eviscerated, however diluted, however unrecognizable compared to the hopes we may have started out with -- is going to pass regardless of what happens on Tuesday in Massachusetts. The result may even be better if Coakley loses.
But that's not the point. Health care reform is small potatoes compared to what is at stake Tuesday.
As soon as I read a comment yesterday pointing out that the current Senate bill could be sent to the House without further Senate vote, to be followed up by using reconciliation to fix the excise tax provisions, I breathed a sigh of relief. It's far from perfect, but it's likely at least as good as anything we could get out of conference and another Senate vote with the current Senate configuration or a Coakley victory.
(I'm hearing otherwise intelligent people add on a caveat -- "if Pelosi can get the votes for the current Senate bill." Come on, let's get real. Pelosi is now saying she can get the votes, but even before she said that it was obvious as hell that if Coakley loses, the House will pass the Senate bill. Barring some catastrophic event that results in sudden and profound brain damage to dozens of Dem Congresscritters, there was no way they'd send it back to the Senate to die in filibuster hell.)
But that doesn't mean it's OK if Coakley loses. Health care reform doesn't need her. Everything -- EVERYTHING -- else does.
You want a new regulatory structure for the financial industry? We need to elect Martha.
You want DADT and DOMA repealed? We need Martha.
Green energy research and infrastructure? Martha. Tax revision to reward keeping jobs in the US? Trade agreements that take product safety and employment conditions into account? Martha. Funding for food and drug safety? An antitrust department that actually bothers to review and govern proposed mergers? Additional improvements in health care? Sane immigration policy? Anything but NO, NO, NO, NO, NO for as far as the eye can see? Martha. Martha. Martha.
I know, the skeptics say we won't get that anyway; look at how Obama and the Dems have wimped out/sold out/betrayed us for the past year.
I would really like everyone who says that to take a look at the record of legislation in this Congress and calculate how much of that legislation would have passed if the only thing the Republicans had to do to block it was to enforce party discipline. Is there any doubt that if that's all they had to do to maintain the status quo, they could do it EVERY. SINGLE. TIME???????
Ed Schultz is usually my least favorite person on the MSNBC evening line-up. But he's the only one on there today who is talking about what's really at stake: The entire Democratic agenda.
Will electing Martha guarantee that we'll get everything on the progressive agenda, or even most of it? No, of course not. But electing Brown guarantees that we'll get exactly none of it.