These Dance Moves Seem Familiar

The choreography was written many, many years ago and still, to this day, American politics humor everyone watching with the same hackneyed, ungraceful, and uneventful dance. Streets in and around Washington, DC are veritably burgeoning with staid men and women born miraculously devoid of any personality dressed in their business suits circumnavigating the same tired steps of an American two-step that everybody knows and everybody dreads. 

Darren Hutchinson, from Salon,  wrote a great piece, citing even the satirical Onion's spot-on depiction of unravelling events, that puts a few things in perspective and even illuminates how there was, at one point, a good and honest chance for and a desire from citizens for major health care reform.

To quote Hutchinson: "Although voters held and continue to hold favorable opinions regarding healthcare reform, the mainstream news media has generally portrayed the public plan in very ominous terms. Also, conservatives have shamelessly distorted the terms of healthcare reform in order to scare voters -- particularly seniors.

Earlier this year, tense debates and even violence broke out at "town hall" meetings held to discuss healthcare reform. Moderate Democrats vowed to derail measures that included a public option. Liberals vowed to kill measures that did not include a public plan option. And it has become increasingly clear that Republicans will not vote for anything that the Democrats propose -- other than bills to augment war spending. More often than not, mainstream media outlets have examined the political "drama" surrounding healthcare reform instead of providing facts that would allow voters to assess the merits of the various proposals.

In the middle of this theatrical performance, the Obama Administration went into hibernation. During the month of August, the president -- who campaigned with an almost unprecedented level of high energy -- virtually disappeared from the radar screen while the media and conservatives distorted Democratic healthcare reform proposals. Obama, however, returned from his vacation to Martha's Vineyard and delivered a speech, during which he lauded and embraced a public plan option. Since that speech, however, Obama has not forcefully advocated the creation of a public plan."

At this point, though, if anyone expects or even expected there to be any major improvements or staggering shifts in healthcare I want to either congratulate you on your unflinching optimism or scoff at your boundless reserve of naivete. The compromises being made for political purposes are sad and unfortunate; worse, they're predictable.  Things are as status quo as they've always been: the single payer system went unmentioned from the very beginning and the public option was constantly misrepresented, demonized, and brandished with such weak support even from its touters that one has to wonder how much anyone in Washington actually gave a damn about it in the first place and how much it was just political tool of enticement for the democrats. My guess would be the democrats knew from the very beginning they weren't going to be able to pass what they said they wanted; if that's the case, they should have begun with the single payer system first in negotiations and not the public option. It's simple used-car salesmanship: if you know you can't sell them at your first proposal, present something out there, highball them. Instead they went weak-kneed and offered a scrawny plea for public option, which is without consideration being blackballed by folks like Lieberman and pussyfooted around by Rahm Emanuel's centrist bullshit. As always, the winner here with any new health care reform that does end up passing will be the health insurance industry. Who else? Just as I finished writing this, I saw a recent development where Reid announces his confidence in a revised bill with the support of Bob Nelson, a moderate democrat who had been on the fence; and still, they're vague on details and I have to gloomily speculate in what malformed condition this monstrously butchered bill will come to us in. A friend of mine said that once Emanuel was solidified within the current administration, Obama was severely handicapped. At the time, I wasn't so convinced; now, I'm not sure he wasn't painfully accurate.

One has to wonder how anyone will ever be able to change the way Washington does its business with the degree of smarm we have in there, most of whom show no sign other than impending death of ever leaving.