Before we start, let me get this straight - as a principled, responsible, thoughtful, leftist - I don't like this bill and I won't be going out of my way to actively support it, either.
Honestly, this dirty hippie has better things to do than to waste time bolstering a deeply flawed chimera born of a co-opted and corrupt process. I'm not interested in hearing the flawed reasoning used to support this corrupt process: the unnecessarily excessive accommodation to corporate interests; the enabling of the corrupt media; the desire for some poor souls to support The President regardless of the quality of legislation.
Now moving that considerable lump of consternation out of the way, I do see an opportunity in the aftermath to move us away from a political duopoly determined to drown The American Experiment under a flood of corporate welfare, middle-class debt, and cheap imported widgets. Now, if this bill passes, the Republican Party will be destroyed, and then the real progress begins.
Before we start, let me get this straight - as a principled, responsible, thoughtful, leftist - I don't like this bill and I won't be going out of my way to actively support it, either.
Honestly, this dirty hippie has better things to do than to waste time bolstering a deeply flawed chimera born of a co-opted and corrupt process. I'm not interested in hearing the flawed reasoning used to support this corrupt process: the unnecessarily excessive accommodation to corporate interests; the enabling of the corrupt media; the desire for some poor souls to support The President regardless of the quality of legislation.
I'm equally unimpressed with the kind of backward rationalization process that insists that we shouldn't hold politicians accountable for not voting with their constituents for socialized (yes dammit, socialized) medicine.
This is not a great bill and I wouldn't even call it good. The only thing that makes it even remotely palatable is that brave legislators like the much-maligned Representative Kucinich and the much lauded Senator Sanders have - unlike the feckless, obsequious and self-defeating Progressive Caucus - held firm against popular beltway opinion and White House pressure to wring every concession and improvement possible.
Now, moving that considerable lump of consternation out of the way, I do see an opportunity in the aftermath to move us away from a political duopoly determined to drown The American Experiment under a flood of corporate welfare, middle-class debt, and cheap imported widgets. Now, if this bill passes, the Republican Party will be destroyed, and then the real progress begins.
If this bill passes the Teabaggers - as GreyHawk has aptly illustrated in this diary - will become so enraged and despondent, that they will either push the Republican Party far outside the acceptable mainstream or actively revolt against the Republican Party. Either way, this 'minority within a minority will utterly destroy the modern Republican Party as an effective political force. Fox has created a Frankstein's Monster of radical-right anti government movements that has already begun to trudge far outside the confines of the castle of establishment Republicanism. The only question left would be how long before the Republican Party finishes its implosion.
The destruction of the Republican Party and the discrediting of the radical, movement right will invariably create a political vacuum. This creates the re-balancing or reconstitution of party politics between differing factions outside of the extreme right. In other words, this collapse will create a rare opportunity for the Left to permanently ally with civil-libertarians and wrest control of the government away from the forces of corporatism and Disaster Capitalism.
In short I believe that the left must 'stand-down' from opposing this bill and instead focus on continuing development of our political machinery as well as planning a takeover of local politics to best take best advantage of the impending political earthquake and insuring the reemergence of the populist left in American politics.