December 2009

Simple conclusions disappear in the complexity of the topic.  The nation stands, teetering and barely balanced, on the precipice of universal health care coverage.  It is a heroic accomplishment.  Especially because it is realized only by fighting through every bobby-trapped Republican-and that would be all of them-in the House and Senate.  Ds in the House show more style and substance than their crawling, scraping counterparts in the Senate.

Senate sausage makers would achieve universal coverage using a deeply flawed system.  Pumping billions into big health care corporations they reward the past casual exchange of human life for monetary profit.  Is it very different from handing billions to the Wall Street titans who now stand against minimal protective regulation?  The pattern holds no promise.

Ah but included are these new regulations of the health care corporations.  Yes but they’re invisible when you stand within view of regulations in Switzerland-a country successfully using a private system to provide universal coverage.

Tied in a Christmas bow is the bottom line question:  will we stand between 31 million Americans and health care coverage because we so hate the corrupt corporations that will provide it.  Howard Dean and MoveOn.org demonstrate the answer isn’t easy.  The good doctor notes the rising value of these corporate stocks as he warns that Senate Democrats condemn us to purgatory for decades.

Victory, even the bitter tasting, is victory.  Swallowing this pill should carry future rewards:  a Democratic party with the courage to learn and enforce minimal party discipline.  Hire political moving vans to carry “Democrats” willing to sacrifice common good for personal political gain to the home of their living dead soul mates-the Republicans.

And finally, our President must find his voice.  He grew hope from the soil of a very dark American chapter.  Carried to the White House on the shoulders of millions, audacity-not timidity-burned in the hearts of both army and general.

We hunger for audacity.  We need audacity.

“We’re now on the one-yard line,” Ax locates the Health Care Reform ball.  Perhaps.  But any team in sports using the Senate playbook would never break the red zone let alone win a game.  Winning requires goals shared by individuals willing to sacrifice for the whole.  If a majority of 51 could pass legislation Senate Democrats might even meet the definition.

51 votes and we have a public option.  51 votes and we have Medicare buy-in.  60 votes and we are forced to provide universal health coverage through a system that insures obscene profits for private corporations.  60 votes and we enshrine the old system of torturing those profits from the sick and dying.

Paul Krugman provides deeper historical perspective of the filibuster in today’s New York Times.  Short version:  it was used sparingly until this arcane procedural rule ran into the current crop of Senate Republicans.

Let’s translate the GOP use of the filibuster for nearly every piece of legislation.  Republicans stand against the representative democracy built by our founding fathers.  They based the union on the ideal that common good grows from the free market place of ideas.  Come all and reason from the best thinking of each individual.  Take action on the consensus of the majority.  Collective wisdom-the fuel of progress-is set free.

Those who know Vietnam will remember the words of one military commander:  We had to destroy the village in order to save it.  Senate Republican now apply the strategy to the nation.

Crawling through the emotional and intellectual minefield of health care reform grants all the right to disappointment.  It cannot take you to voting Republican in 2010 if you care about a more perfect American union.