I'm all for the Lieberman-bashing, make no mistake about that, and frankly I think it's long overdue and I'm hoping that a great deal more of it is in store. The time has come for all those to stand and be counted who align themselves with insurance company backers in direct opposition to their progressive electorate. And for Lieberman, this is not simply a fraction of what comprises his resolve, it's the whole thing, and I hope he's recalled.
But let's not forget our other big betrayer, the one who is actually in the Democratic Party, Madam Speaker Pelosi.
All summer long, there she was at her podium, Madam Botox in the "flesh," promising us day in and day out, unquivocally, that she would NOT support a bill without the public option or, more specifically, the strongest possible public option, and anything else would be unacceptable.
But it was not to last.
And in the case of Pelosi, we are offered a visage no more self-disclosing than it is authentic. And perhaps Pelosi's numerous cosmetic surgeries have not been motivated purely by vanity alone. Perhaps it was in her desperation that she sought a way to preserve not only her fading youthful luster, as the unkind years swiftly fell upon her, but also the face of the younger progressive she had begun as and lost along the way. That the populace would be fooled by the younger leftist face looking back at them, even as the callous older soul beneath it moved further right of center. The most extreme measure taken to stifle our realization that when she left the Progressive Caucus back in '03, she really truly left it, taking the direction of the party as a whole with her.
And so the figurative face of the Democratic Party became just as artificial as the one put forward by its literal one. We get what we vote for. If we want progressives in power, we must vote for progressive candidates, not for delusional narcissists who believe they can operate as sacred cows in the favor of their financial backers without having to answer for it or with the belief that our collective memory is limited to three months or less.