Cross posted from www.alphanovus.org
When all but four of the republicans in the House of Representatives cast their votes to destroy medicare, it seemed like a dream come true. Whatever party brave (or stupid) enough to gut medicare would have the impressive distinction of having even lower approval ratings than Al Qaeda. Yet, here we have 236 Republicans who were willing to take the risk. Democrats no doubt must have been ecstatic. These nimrods just signed their death warrants. The only thing better would be if the morons in the Senate followed suit, and in fact, to my surprise, they did just that. They did so, even after seeing a Democrat win one of the reddest districts in all of New York, by going after her opponent’s medicare killing vote. Awesome news, right?
Well, yes and no. It’s definitely always a good thing to have as many weapons at your disposal as possible. But the problem I have with the media’s reaction to Kathy Hochul’s victory is that they felt the Dems finally had a powerful weapon in their possession with which to combat the Republicans. But I disagree. It’s not that Dems “finally” had a major weapon, it’s that they had received yet ANOTHER major weapon that will most likely end up collecting dust in the armory.
See, the Democrats were never in short supply of unpopular positions and policies to hammer the Republicans with. In many cases, the public sided overwhelmingly with Democratic positions on many issues. Taxing the rich? People liked it. Increased regulation on Wall Street? Damn skippy. Being tougher on oil companies who destroyed our oceans? You betcha.
So how did all that public support help legislation? Well, instead of raising taxes for the rich, we actually went ahead and CUT their taxes. Instead of keeping a tight leash on the likes of Goldmann Sacchs, we passed legislation that doesn’t have any real teeth and won’t prevent another financial crisis. Oh, also, bonuses. Lots and lots of bonuses. And British Petroleum was strong armed by the government to pay a whopping 1/5 of the total damage they caused.
Yeah. Forgive me if I’m a little pessimistic.
Many of the problems Democrats have had in terms of shaping policy discussion were self inflicted. In fairness, I do understand that Obama and a good chunk of the Democrats in congress have to walk a fine line when it comes to taking on the wealthy and corporations. Obama is beholden to many of the same corporate interests that Republicans are as well (Goldmann Sacchs was Obama’s second largest contributor).
Also, it doesn’t help that even after Kathy Hochul won in her district that we have people like Steny Hoyer saying medicare cuts are on the table. There’s no point in bringing a gun to a knife fight if you plan on handing your foe all your bullets beforehand.