[Cross-posted at The Left Coaster.]
I certainly regret the flip, nonchalant manner in which I described circumventing Democratic Blue Dogs yesterday in a gallant attempt at building confidence for healthcare. I suppose leveraging Dianne Feinstein wouldn’t be too difficult for an official with real title and power, but for the little people Blue Dog Dianne Feinstein has always been a completely implacable wall of obdurate stupidity that no avalanche of phone calls or faxing has ever swayed.
The stars are aligned for health care reform in DC, if it’s going to happen it’s got to happen now. Incredibly, just the incremental step of public option for insurance looks almost dead in the Senate. Howard Dean put out the call yesterday: whip your Senator only if they’re a wavering Blue Dog Democrat on health care. That means whipping Dianne Feinstein.
Politicians like Dianne Feinstein are often the reason I’m sure writing about politics is terrible for my mental health. Politicians like Dianne Feinstein are often why the Democratic Party has so often failed. Politicians like Dianne Feinstein are precisely why so much of the country is so completely fucked up right now.
Make no mistake, Dianne Feinstein defines Blue Dog, there isn’t a Republican or conservative issue out there that doesn’t have her backing. She voted for the wars, she voted for the tax cuts, she voted for the Patriot Act, the list goes on and on, looking at the record without a name attached she would have to be a solid Republican.
Yet she comes from the vividly cerulean blue California, hotly Democratic and often in the forefront of liberal issues. She’s never held accountable for her appalling votes of treachery, either in the press or by the Party. She wasn’t primaried seriously and just cruised to another six year term with no opposition at all.
Well, we weren’t this blue when she first got into office, but that’s the only tiny clue I can offer the reader as to how this Blue Dog barker of incredible force and power came about, California should not have produced and enabled such a treacherous disastrous Blue Dog Dianne Feinstein all these years but there she still is.
She has a disastrously destructive habit of swooping into a developing legislative issue and dropping quote bombs that can really blast apart Democratic confidence, morale and hope. After voters rejected the stupid and shameful abdication of duty Governor Bicep called a budget in our farcical special election last month Feinstein immediately took the Republican Schwarzenegger position that the results meant insane Hoover slashing of the budget.
She did it again last week when she said "I don’t know that he [Obama] has the votes right now," for public option, knifing with perfect timing any chance for the crucial element to get some positive momentum. Just imagine where we would be this week with public option if Feinstein we a real champion fighting for us out there. Instead it’s this desperate pathetic whipping to some dolt bought and paid for a long time ago, for such a Democracy to be around so long we should not be in this sick state of whipping a Senator to become a member of her Party.
That’s what really bothers me the most about Dianne Feinstein, the hundreds of times she’s just blithely said fuck you and left the little people behind, screwing the country horribly in the process. She has to know she’s responsible for millions of crushed lives, tens of thousands will be gutted just with the California budget alone this year, but she simply doesn’t care. Democrats are supposed to care, humans are supposed to care, and I will forever be sadly mystified by her.
For once, Dianne, can you care and not leave us behind? After the incredible mess and howling pain of our current health care system, how could you do this to us?
If you are a Californian who knows improved health care is vital for our future as a country, whip Dianne Feinstein (if you wish) to wake up and finally represent her people, state, country, and basic decency by supporting public option in our healthcare reform.
Phone: 202-224-3841
Fax: 202-228-3954