The GOP knew what was at stake in the war over healthcare reform, and they spared no effort, or expense to bring Obama his "Waterloo" moment.
Instead, their supporters threw it all on a desperate, all or nothing gamble that now looks much like Pickett's Charge.
Now, surveying the battlefield, the GOP has extremely limited options. Outnumbered, outflanked, out-thought (not that THAT was too difficult), and public opinion solidified against their position and increasingly, their party. It's a win folks...maybe not Appamottox yet...but a win just the same.
Like that afternoon in Pennsylvania, the Confederacy...er, GOP...actually had glimpsed victory. Dominating the news cycles during the August recess, process bottled up in an intractable committee, Democrats, despite superior numbers, on the defensive. One more push, they must have thought, and we bring down Healthcare, Obama, and retake the Capitol.
Then,the seemingly impossible happened.
Let down by their generals, the foot soldiers took over. Alan Grayson did a helluva post-modern swinging gate--sweeping the charging confederates straight into retreat, and solidifying the rhetorical, and policy, high ground. Voices here and elsewhere took the fight to the enemy, and put it back in our leadership. The drumbeat of momentum began sounding. Not all of us heard it, but bit by bit, the summer's bad news subsided. First, small victories, then bigger ones, while the pro reform forces solidified, then mobilized.
Today, it's as if the decisive rebuttal we voted for in 2008 is finally at hand. Maybe not yet certain, but momentum is clearly in the direction of reform, and victory.
And our enemies will soon lapse into the disarray that befits them: NY-23 on a national scale.
It will happen, and it will be sweet. Even sweeter for those who will finally realize the security denied them by a system designed for profits, not patients. For them the victory will be not just sweet, but rather righteous.
When, and I do mean when, the bill is delivered and signed into law, I look forward to one helluva Gettysburg address for our times.
Peace.