Without either advocating for or lambasting the health care bill currently before the Congress, this is about certain frenemies of ours who claim to be on our side, yet would rather be right than actually get anything done. To that end, let me concede that yes, single-payer health care would have been the best possible outcome of the past year's debate, if you could call it that. Pity that, as an extremely heavy lift, getting it done was more like lifting a Hummer H2 by the bumper with one's bare hands while a friend changes a tire. That is the reality, and no amount of wailing, whining, name-calling, finger-pointing, the holding of one's breath, or stamping of one's feet will change that. Yet some people here insist on behaving as if they were a herd of three year old children kept past naptime at the neighborhood kindergarten.
Well, I didn't join the party of adults who act like preschool children when I became a Democrat in 1998. There are enough people like that in the former party of Lincoln.
What the fuck is wrong with you people? You know who you are; if you're really not one of them, please disregard this WTF. I'm not talking to you. I'm talking about the people who are ignoring the fact that the House of Representatives wants to repair the Senate bill as best they can under the current circumstances, pass it, and actually move the football down the field for a change. Isn't actually doing good far more important than just talking a good game? I, for one, admire the Slaughterhouse Rule, as the other side is calling it (a rare glint of literary brilliance on their part), for its creativity and insight. Republicans either don't understand the concept of functional equivalence (unless it's convenient), or they're just hoping their hangers-on don't understand it. So do it, Congress. It's not so much ramming it down our throats as sticking it up the Republicans' asses, and I've been waiting for the people we hired to get shit done to do this for a long time.
There are people right here at Daily Kos who, when we are about to shove a few reams of paper up the Republicans' asses, somehow continue to find reasons to hem and haw about it. It's not perfect. This or that pet provision isn't in there. Nancy Pelosi has abandoned the progressives yet again. Jesus Christ on a cracker, get over yourselves.
Or is it that you have been lurking here for awhile, months perhaps, with the intent to spread the same kind of manure I've been seeing on my television set night after night for the last several weeks, with Dennis Kucinich or Michael Moore as cover, so that we might be more receptive to your bullshit than if you just copied and pasted something from the National Review or AHIP or Citizens United (who robocalled me the other night) or any of dozens of ad-hoc "advocacy" groups arrayed around us making as much grating, nerve-wracking noise as possible?
And if I dare say anything, anything at all, I'm accused of being a member of the Daily Kos Purity Police. I'm being too 'politically correct'. I'm being a bigot. I'm being closed-minded, and therefore not really 'liberal.' I'm abusing my HR privileges. Bullshit. I'm only interested in getting something worthwhile done, and I see the Michael Moore camp, as well-meaning as they think they are, as obstacles to this goal. Obstacles we don't need, and shouldn't have to deal with, especially at this point.
So this is what the stakes are. The Democratic-controlled Congress can pass the health care reform bill, fixing it as best they can through whatever process they have available to them, getting as much as they can, and probably get another shot at whatever didn't make the first cut, the public option, for instance, at the next Congress. The Republicans would be frothing at the mouth. Good. I would watch that on pay-per-view.
Or...the bill fails. The All Talk, No Action Coalition wins the day, and John Boehner of Ohio becomes the next Speaker of the House of Representatives. Charles Schumer of New York becomes Majority Leader of a battered, bruised, and barely intact Senate Democratic majority, unable to do much of value. Gridlock on steroids prevails. The biggest debates in the House become centered on the same sort of wedge issues that dominated Congress from 1995 to 2007. Abortion. Desecration of the flag. 'Protection' of marriage. Tax cuts. Destroying whatever remains of affirmative action. Abstinence-only sex ed. 'Teaching the controversy' about whatever version of creationism is competing with evolution this year. Investigating the executive branch for no better reason than that they can. All while the Republic burns.
Do you want this? Were you people even awake those twelve years? Is having to put up with this for however-many years worth being 'right' on HCR? I can assure you, if you liked Congress when Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay and Trent Lott were running it, you'll love it when even crazier, more bigoted, stupider, more ignorant, and more malevolent people take it over because the people you put in charge to get shit done can't, or won't, actually do it.