This diary is not directed toward people who, like me, are disgusted with what has happened to the "health-care" bill. Similarly, it is not directed toward those who are furious, outraged, and incensed with Obama's lack of leadership, or Reid's, or whoever else might be to blame. And it certainly isn't directed toward those who feel almost uncontrollable rage toward senators Lieberman, Nelson, or Lincoln.
It's directed toward those who are saying they will stay home rather than vote for Democrats in the 2010 election, or who won't support Obama in 2012, or who won't give another dime to any Democrat again because of the health-care-reform fiasco.
We're playing with fire here, and I think it's very, very dangerous. I hope you'll follow me across the fold, take a step back, and reconsider.
The right wing is fired up once again, much like they were in 1994. But the right wing is now much further right (which was unimaginably extreme even then). Their heroes are now, among actual politicians, theocons like Sarah Palin, climate-change deniers like James Inhofe, and bloodthirsty lunatics like Michelle Bachman, to say nothing of the right-wing media led by Glen Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and company, who, among countless other atrocities, seem to be attempting to incite among their followers to the assassination of the Democratic leadership, vigilante-style violence toward immigrants, and bloody revolution.
Meanwhile, here at Daily Kos, a great many comments have been made recently--and with increasing frequency--that Obama is no better than George W. Bush, or even that he is in the worse of the two. While Obama certainly hasn't lived up to my hopes in his first year in office, from a progressive point of view, this position simply cannot be justified. To name only a handful of major differences: Obama has rescinded Bush's ban on stem-cell research, reversed the ban on overseas funding of clinics that provide abortion, approached the climate-change issue in good faith, and successfully nominated a progressive supreme-court justice in Sonya Sotomayor (compare Sotomayor with Bush's picks: John Roberts and Samuel Alito). The list of ways in which Obama is more progressive than Bush could of course be far, far longer, but I hope this will suffice in making my point.
Similarly, commenters have said that there is no substantive difference between Democratic and Republican congressmen and congresswomen. Since such comments have arisen in the context of the health-insurance-reform debate, the easiest rebuttal to this claim is the house Republican health "reform" proposal, which is an absolute joke, and which makes the now-catastrophically-bad Democratic bill glow by comparison. Do you like the public option? The Medicaid buy-in? A bill that wouldn't jeapordize a woman's right to choose? So does upwards of ninety percent of the Democratic caucus. On the other side of the isle, only two or three Republicans, at best, in both houses of congress combined support any of these things.
But to return to my main point: to those of you who have vowed never to vote for a Democrat again (or who have made similar or related promises): imagine the likely state of things in 2012 if you follow through with your plan, considering how far the Republicans have moved to the right. Who's our president? Huckabee? Palin? Do you trust either of those people, or anyone else likely to be nominated by the new, fringe-driven Republican Party, to respect the separation of church and state? (Would they be inclined even to allow the teaching of evolution in public schools? Would it really be safe to be a Buddhist, a Muslim, or an atheist in this country under such a regime)? To respect your privacy in matters of sexual preference, abortion, even birth control? To protect Habeas Corpus? To abstain from torture? I certainly don't. To the contrary: I think we would be looking at an increasingly theocratic state.
Do you think the supreme court would protect us on these counts? I don't--with the exception of Sotomayor, the liberals and moderates on the court--Stevens (89 years old), Ginsburg (76 years old and struggling with cancer), and Breyer (71 years old) are unlikely to be around too very much longer. With a (very likely right-wing) Republican president and a (rabid, foaming-at-the-mouth right-wing) Republican senate, any high-court appointments would virtually certainly themselves be right-wingers.
Do you not see that this is an extremely dangerous scenario, which would almost surely involve all three branches of government conspiring to surpass even the Bush II administration in ruthlessness, torture, privacy-invasion, and so on, pushing the arrogant "might-makes-right" standpoint to an even more extreme degree? And do you not see that this is in fact a reasonably likely outcome of disenchanted Democrats staying home in 2010/2012, given the ever-increasing hysteria and fervor on the right?
Please: be angry. Express your anger. Use obscene language in doing so if that's what you feel like doing. Do everything you can possibly do to knock sense into our current congress and administration and get them to proceed with the progressive, liberal policies that we were promised, and that prompted us to spend hours that we couldn't afford canvassing, and contributing hundreds of dollars we couldn't afford. If you believe the bad outweighs the good in the Senate health-care bill, then flood your congressperson with calls, emails, and letters, encouraging them to support a filibuster to kill it. All of these courses of action are fine, indeed noble expressions of your political opinions.
But before you swear off the Democratic party, before you vow never to lift a finger to help them again, before you contribute to what seems to be the snowballing sense in there parts that doing so represents the "principled" stance, please consider the nightmarish situation in which we will find ourselves if you actually follow through and allow the unhinged, nastier-than-ever Republicans to retake power.
Please?