Dear Mr. President, you were sworn in on this day one year ago to give America the bipartisanship we've always craved. It was not our desire to see things get done; we just wanted to see Washington politicians come together and play nice so the villagers would stop throwing their feces at each other.
The first thing I heard this morning is Joe Scarborough, and boy is he disappointed in President Obama. Joe retold stories about how he heard from Republicans -- Republicans! -- back in 2008 about what a uniter Barack Obama could be. Then Obama did as everyone does when they campaign for the highest office in America and said he was coming to Washington to work together on the biggest issues facing our nation. A year later Obama has not let Eric Cantor write the financial regulation bill; let John Boehner write the health care reform and let Mitch McConnell pick his Supreme Court nominee. And all of this is very troubling because Americans lose sleep every night wondering when someone will bring Democrats and Republicans together.
Scarborough will not be the first one. David Broder was probably up at 2 a.m. pounding out one of his worthless columns about how Scott Brown is not just a signal that Americans want bipartisanship but that Brown needs to be offered immigration reform as a sign of good faith.
We all know how worthless pundits are, but this new meme trotted out this morning that "Obama needs to be more bipartisan" is as dumb as anything crawling out of Hannity's mouth every night. Lacking bipartisanship? How about lacking fight? Obama schmoozed House Republicans to try and get their stimulus package votes, but since Scarborough wouldn't dream of thinking that Republicans would craft their entire strategy as being OBSTRUCTIONISTS, he thinks it's Obama's fault for taking the "Pelosi approach."
Then there's health care, which Obama failed to get Republicans on board with again. He constantly made overtures to Snowe and Collins. He let the public option go without even giving it a fight. Instead of taking the REAL leftist position -- single-payer -- he told ConservaDem Max Baucus to write the reform bill. Obama even made good on deals the Bush administration had with Big Pharma which many Republicans sitting in Congress voted for.
This is what we're up against in 2010. All of the work that you people did will ultimately go to waste because Democrats are waking up with soiled underwear this morning and more worried about winning elections than doing what they feel is right. "It's too much," they will say. "We need to be Republicans." If anything, Democrats should be pushed towards being Democrats. Real Democrats. The kind of Democrats that do not run scared from Republicans, play into Republican obstructionism and satisfy the village's desire for bipartisanship. My greatest wish is that these giant losers -- these Democrats that accomplished almost nothing with supermajorities -- can wake up and for the next 10 months campaign and govern like their hair is on fire.
If they are going to emulate anything that George Bush did, it's putting what you think is right above what the rest of the public thinks it thinks. Since they don't need 60 votes anymore, how about ramming through a health care bill that works? The chance to push through meaningful progressive reform that this country badly needs is right now. The time for dicking around is over: one year was wasted on appeasing Republicans and heeding the words of pundits like Scarborough telling Democrats to slow their roll.
Democrats, put whatever idea of bipartisanship you have and forget it; get on your ass and do some goddamn governing.