[Cross-posted at The Left Coaster.]
You gotta have something to look forward to, Robert Duvall’s character told his nephew in A Family Thing, a good line I’ve tried to keep front and center through some dark times, even though things seem to have gone to hell just be patient enough to remember the good small things that always—without fail—arrive on the calendar to make life fun and worthwhile. Giving up on the future without something precise and specific to hope for holds the potential for completely wasting the present, something I have rueful experience with.
One day, in some universe of time and space presently unknown, something called healthcare reform will pass the United States Congress. It’s time for the stridently vocal proponents of healthcare (pass the damn bill now!) to fully realize a sad, irrevocably melancholy fact of the evolution: the process itself has become an issue, an unending nightmare for everyone involved that’s degrading the Democracy and our Party. As stated before I’ve become basically ambivalent about passing healthcare because the nightmare of passing a laughably meek bill genuinely has confused me on the merits of it all.
For instance, at Balloon Juice yesterday a brilliant writer with a much better record of efficacy than I’ll likely ever possess ripped into Joan McCarter as a concern troll for healthcare. This from a guy who said he quit the Kos community ‘cause he got tired of Kossarians criticizing Democrats, well look dude, what in fact is this tirade against Joan about? The ultimate irony is that McCarter has been a brilliant, tireless, indefatigable proponent for the little people in this awful debacle, yet the process yields this guy with a knifing like this?
Stop. Please make the fucking nightmare end, please, please pass the bill or give up, I truly give not a shit, not an atom of feces in the entire universe do I care. Our best people are tearing each other apart and a slice of me experienced semi-absurd chivalry in the matter, you can’t talk to Joan McCarter like that, ya sumbitch, seriously, be glad you won’t run into me on the street today, home grown.
Ugh. If anything ever passes no will ever forget the nightmare to accomplish it, it’s become an irrevocable black mark weaved into the issue that will not be forgotten, no matter how desperate the brays of success will be when healthcare passes. On that holy day far, far into the future in some grand epoch of humanity when healthcare passes.
Yes, it will arrive—or Obama will give up on it—and then what? What do we have to look forward in accomplishing for the next 6-7 years? Are we building out infrastructure, constructing schools, or making serious investments in our people anywhere? We just spent $50 billion on Iraqi infrastructure (that’s not a typo), when do the little people of America get their turn?
I would suggest to the Obama people lame rationalizations and weak selling points for a healthcare plan that won’t even click into place this term are not exactly beacons of hope for the future, not something politically the Party can look forward to. Chopping $100 billion out of the annual Department of Defense budget cash and using it for little people infrastructure sure as hell would, but what the hell would I know, if I’m not on the Obama kill the motherfuckers militaristic bandwagon how could I possibly have any inkling about what would be good politics for the Democratic Party?
My personal choice is federal high speed rail and light rail/trolley community projects, $100 billion beautiful dollars of cash for ten years, god damn right, Department of Defense, we’re spending it, just like you do, except this time on little people. What a concept.
Just as an aside, the Obama people should further note they’ve got my vote. I’ll vote for Obama and the straight Democratic ticket this Fall just as I always do, I’m not dense, I’ll continue to be the loyal liberal I’ve always been in this rigid two-party American political environment. Feel fortunate, homes. Only the environment delivers my vote, not the performance of a political team that produces a knifing against Joan McCarter. Way to go.
At any rate, here we still are in these fun February times. I wish I knew what was next to run with politically when the summer arrives.