Well, the Democrats and their feckless cowardice now stand for?
Health care reform is dead in the water unless the House votes to accept entirely the Senate version of the bill.
And there’s no certainty that Pelosi has the votes. The Blue Dogs and other centrists may just abandon the whole thing, and the liberals are very angry that the House version of the bill is now dead.
Who’s to blame?
1) The President of the United States: As with the stimulus, he woefully underestimated both how badly the economy was doing and how uninterested the Republicans were in any kind of bipartisanship. The time to pass health care was in the first 100 days, the fact that he couldn’t get this done is a failure of leadership, nothing more and nothing less.
2) The Senate of the United States: Harry Reid is without question the worst majority leader of the past 50 years. He could have used reconciliation to get health care reform passed, which is exactly what the Republicans did with the Bush tax cuts and any other piece of legislation they really wanted. Instead, Reid turned it over to Max Baucus, who wasted 9 months trying to seduce Olympia Snowe.
3) The American people: They elect these clowns, and the clowns reflect the electorate very well. A pig ignorant society when it comes to basic economics is a society that’s easily gamed by plutocrats who know what they want and buy the Congress that will deliver the goods.
Gorilla says: “In a land of mythological denial, the one eyed middle man remains king!”
Tags: health care reform