Let's review. The bill contains no cost controls, no public option, and very little oversight or regulation of insurance companies by the government. This was true before, and it's true now, so what has changed to convince liberals to support this bill? Specifically, I really really want to know what Obama said to Kucinich on the plane that not only made Kucinich agree to switch his vote, but also has him running around evangelizing like some kind of born-again Centrist.
As is depressingly usual, the left in this country is all sound and fury, signifying nothing. As Glenn Greenwald points out, this means that the Corporatist Dems can safely ignore anyone to their left, because the left will always fold when confronted with the "It's the lesser of two evils" card (it trumps the 'principled objections' card every time!). People: the lesser of two evils is still evil. I mean, JESUS CHRIST ON A CRUTCH. Everyone on the left is having a good time pointing out that the Republicans never met an earmark they didn't like while Bush II (Bush I, Reagan) was in office, and our Little Middle Eastern Escapades were paid for by off-books accounting that would have made Arthur Anderson proud. So true. Yet if the Bush White House had made a backroom deal with insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, and for-profit hospitals that resulted in mandating that millions of Americans buy their shitty shitty products, vastly increasing their profits while not requiring them to, you know, actually provide health care, what would Markos Moulitsas have said then? Would it have been, "Well, you know, this contract with Halliburton isn't great--I mean, we asked them to provide the troops with food and water for $85 billion dollars a day, and they agreed to give them each a can of soda and a pack of gum for $165 billion dollars a day--but now is not the time to question these trifling details, because something is better than nothing..."
Amusingly, the Democrats and the Leftists Who Love Them Too Much have bought the line that they have to pass this bill because if they don't, then they'll be seen as weak. But this bill is entirely predicated upon the weakness of the left in this country, and the certain knowledge that no matter how bad the Democrats look, the Republicans always look worse. This means that the Democratic establishment counts on the fact that the left will always turn out to vote for them because the Right looks like (well, okay, has actually become) a bunch of Christ-crazy rednecks who'll ship women back to the kitchen and shove gays back in the closet.
For example, in the very post that details the back room deal and K Street strategy of the White House, Miles Mogulescu (hitherto, and probably henceforth, unknown to me) writes,
RESPONSE TO COMMENTS: Whenever I write blogs which are critical of Obama and Congressional Democrats for making corporatist deals, I get numerous comments from people who believe they are progressive but say they will never vote for Obama or Democrats again, that they will stay home at the next election, or that they will vote for small third parties who have no chance of winning. It's not my intent to encourage those views. Do people making these comments really think bringing Republicans back to power would make things better?
Well, Miles, the real problem here is that these are our only two options. This means the American voter is constantly trying to object to the status quo, and it doesn't actually matter which party is in power. They're just going to go the other way, because it's the only way they have to punish the corporate toadies, lackies, and shoeshine boys who have shipped good jobs overseas, allowed American cities to crumble, perpetuated vast inequalities of wealth and status, and permitted the shameful iniquity that is reality television.
No comments:
Post a Comment