A few days ago I posted a diary, Will you rally when HCR passes?". I would say about 75% of the responses were variations on the answer, "no." Some people said, "I'll be holding my nose," or "no way I'm gonna celebrate that messy bill," or... all kinds of other stuff.
But take a look at what happened yesterday outside and inside the halls of Congress, and what's happening right now today. Thousands of teabaggers are out there demonstrating against the bill, telling our president to "go back to Africa," and calling members of Congress "faggot" and "nigger". Yet, when I said we needed to show our members of Congress we've got their backs, most people on this site responded, "For what? What have they really done for us?"
All I can say is that I hope today at least a few more people understand why I said then, and will say again now, that we need to be out supporting the Democrats right now. And we need to rally and celebrate when this bill passes. Sure, it's a big clusterfuck. Yes, it forces people to buy corporate insurance. Yes, it has more restrictions on abortions than we'd like... but those are all things we can fix if we support the Democrats now otherwise...
Otherwise, if we allow the angry right to be the face of public reaction to this bill, then that reinforces the meme of Democrats, "acting in the face of overwhemling public opposition," that Rush and Glenn and Mitch and John would like the media to portray. And that means more chance that the Republicans win seats or even take back the House in November.
If you don't love the bill that is about to pass (I don't love many parts of it), then the only way forward is to support and elect people who will be willing to move forward with fixing the parts you don't like. And I'll tell you, if they think they're out there in the cold facing people calling them faggots and niggers while the people for whom they supposedly just went through all this shit sit at home and say, "sorry, not good enough," you're going to see more good members of Congress retiring, and you're going to see fewer and fewer tough stances from those who remain. I don't care how much you believe in public service, everyone reaches a point where they will say, "fuck this," and go home.
And if you want that to happen, and you want to see Republicans win back the House and the White House and then pass legislation which repeals the good parts of this new law while leaving in place the parts you hate the most, well you just keep sitting there behind your keyboard, "holding your nose" and saying "not good enough."