The Two Post-Massachusetts Options
Last night, as the results poured in from the embarrassment in Massachusetts, my living room TV was of course tuned to Rachel Maddow giving the play-by-play of the “filibuster-proof” majority’s final, decisive teabagging into obscurity.
But I was sitting in my room, reading about Conan and writing and doing anything else but give a shit. Because as smarmy and disingenuous and duplicitous and dishonest and dangerous as new Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown, the first Republican from the state since the 60s, obviously is, the last year has convinced me that it just doesn’t matter.
Don’t get me wrong — I care deeply about politics, insofar as that it has the capacity for great good and the potential to help millions. That’s why I’m a Democrat. Or so I thought.
Over the last year, we have watched this great harbinger of change and hope become a two-sided ATM, distributing cash and loopholes to bankers and AHIP, while offering a stream of broken promises to those that worked so hard to bring that wave to power. In place of real health reform we get lobbyist-approved handouts to AHIP and instead of real mortgage relief, we get a couple of token readjustments while banks go Scrooge McDuck diving in their government-sponsored piles of money.
I like Barack Obama. He seems like a nice, smart guy, and that’s already welcomed change in DC. But his lofty words of hope and change and fighting for the millions of Americans left behind from thirty years of neo-liberal at best economic policy have rung hollow. He’s been sabotaged by conservative elements in his own administration, as well as “Democrats” in the Senate that see politics as games of Risk and Monopoly instead of the balance of a nation and the hundreds of millions who desperately look to them for help.
So why should I care that this “filibuster-proof” majority is broken? Like we really had power when Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson were taking the nation hostage for their own ego and lobbyist driven demands. Like it really mattered that we had sixty votes when Chris Dodd, no doubt licking his chops at an “adviser” job to lobbyists and banks and credit card companies once he’s forced into retirement this fall, announces he’s going to nix the one meaningful financial reform Obama has proposed. Like we had any voice when Evan Bayh went on TV nearly every goddamn day to publicly deflate any progressive legislation’s hope for passage.
The last week or so, I’ve gotten email after email urging me to donate and phonebank, to save “progressive” causes and the chance to challenge the fat cats of Wall Street. Obama said bankers didn’t need another vote in DC. He’s right — they already have more than enough.
Maybe I would have gotten off my ass and helped out, if I believed a single word those emails and speeches said. But after the last year, I know they’re just words. Of course I wanted Martha Coakley to win, because a dead fish, incompetent campaigner who takes her constituents for granted with a D by her name is STILL better than the first teabagging representative. But did it really matter?
A year ago, people were pumped for change, and polls showed that UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE had overwhelming support. Fast forward a few embarrassing months and political hostage crises, and all of a sudden, lobbyist-sponsored “Health Insurance Reform” seems to be a poison pill at the voting booth.
Did the nation all of a sudden stop supporting the idea that everyone should be able to see a doctor if they’re sick? Of course not — they realized how backhanded and slimy the politicians in DC are, and no matter how much of an improvement the bill may have been, were disgusted by the greed and bubble-like inability to focus on actual constituents.
Millions are still out of work, and the great stimulus hope, as helpful as it was in staving off catastrophe, did very little to springboard the country back towards prosperity. People are desperate for help, and all we’ve seen is help for the few that got us into this mess. Is it any surprise that voters are disgusted with what they’ve seen?
The teabagging moment offers a duplicitous, astroturf false salvation to these people, of course. Advocating for less regulation in the financial sector, because the government is big and scary, is not populism — it’s what got us into this great economic abyss in the first place. But they’re speaking the language of anger and right now, how can you blame people for rejecting what they’ve seen over the last year?
So the Democrats have two choices. One, they can do what they always do, which is turn even more conservative because they misread polls and are afraid of actually fighting for the beliefs that a majority of Americans, regardless of party, hold to be the ideals of this nation: economic and social justice, personal privacy and peace.
Or, they could realize that the only way they can make history and, if I’m appealing to their selfish side, hold onto power, is to actually make real change. Fight for jobs. Lots and lots of them, millions by the fistful. Kick AHIP out of health reform, and get something that delivers aid to 50 million Americans who can’t see a doctor without going bankrupt. Live up to their campaign slogans, not the expensive lobbyist dinners that paid for the TV ads.
The Democrats still have a full year with a 59-seat majority, which is more than President Bush ever had. So there’s still no excuse in the world for them not to fight hard and make real change happen. Do I think it’s gonna happen? No, of course not, but it’s the last gasp of “hope” that I have left.
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