Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Ninth Inning Fail

White House senior advisor David Axelrod told ABC News today that this is the "9th inning" for the health care reform debate and that "President Obama is getting in the game [uh, about time?] and is 'at the point where he can close this' debate."

Oh really? Axelrod continued:
As to the fate of a government option plan to compete with private insurance, Axelrod suggested the controversial concept is gone but not forgotten: "The spirit that led him to support a public option is still very much at play here and so you know he wants competition. He wants choice.'
Russ Feingold has this to say about this "controversial concept":



The public option is the only way to bring down the skyrocketing costs of American health care. As Feingold says, "Real reform needs a strong public option." So if the public option is dead, so is real health care reform.

But how the hell can it be dead when 77 percent of the American people support it and even 65 percent of Republicans support it (according to an AARP poll)? That's as close as this country will ever come to a consensus. And it's dead????

Nevertheless, indications are that the administration is ready to bail (read: fail) on the public option and thus has declared it "dead" so that no one will pay attention to the fact that they are the ones who are murdering it.

This is change we can believe in only in the most profoundly cynical sense.

There's something much, much worse at work here than our rapacious health care system, and that would be our rapacious political system.

If Obama and the Dems undermine real health care reform, like it sounds like they're going to, then I suggest we encourage progressives like Kucinich and Feingold to organize themselves into a new party, one that is beholden to the people and not corporations.

Because I'm not voting for those damned Republicans any more than I'm voting for those damned Democrats. And I'm not not voting either....

So if the Dems screw this up, it's party time. NEW party time.

Oh, and in case you're wondering, I still won't back down.

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