Does Brown’s Senate Win Mean End of Health Reform?

This was the actual title.

And it’s not like Time pulled this out of the blue. Many Democrats and other sources before the election, had been wondering the same thing. Maloney: Health Care Dies if Coakley Loses.  Here are a few more examples of this. And our favorite of them all “If Coakley loses, I don’t see how we can get this done.”

We thought this was all a big gag played simultaneously by both google’s search engines and all the major publications and spokespeople, since, obviously one random person’s vote is pretty much inconsequential.

And then it dawned on us. If they lose this election, they lose their “majority”!

Of course, in the world of Democratic politics, majority for them means 60 percent of the votes, not, as one would quite sensibly imagine, 51%; while for their opponents, a majority means only 41%, once again, instead of the 51% that one would expect.

Of course, here’s a commenter on the hot political insider blog “The Note” at ABC who obviously must be smoking crack, or has received their math training at the George Bush School of math and deficit reduction.  Because, while we don’t know that a better bill has to be more “progressive,” they make the seemingly insane suggestion that “maybe if Coakley loses, the Dems will decide that 51 votes are a winning number.”

Yes, of course, in a world where 51 is larger than 49.  But in Democrat Politics world, 51 is smaller than 49, and 59 is smaller than 41, when those 41 are the big, bad, huff and puff and blow your house down Republicans, who will “keep the bill from passing,” mainly, because, well, they want to.

We’re not saying that the ability of the minority to sometimes serve as a check upon the will of the majority in our Congress is not a critical part of our basic system of government.  It is.  We are saying, however, that this new millennium, it only seems to go one way, as Democrats repeatedly both allow, and play right into, their opponent’s framing, and often control, of the issues.

Also consider, throughout most of this decade, when Democrats had an actual minority in the Senate and faced an opposition party president (much like the situation is now for Republicans), how many times did the Democrats nevertheless control the Senate?

Zero.

Yet Democrats are allowing Republicans to do it to them, now.

Why is that?

Here’s the worst part. Instead of getting the point of this rhetorical question, Democrats will actually provide what are, to them, “answers” to it. That’s apparently what makes them Democrats.

As for the health care bill itself, if it does get waylaid –and we don’t buy passionately made, but we think incredibly lame and defeatist, arguments that waylaying it means the issue is done, and suggest instead that the issue be covered and sold more accurately, along with writing a much better bill — we’re not sure this is the negative that Democrats seem to think that it is.

That is, this bill seems to do more for health insurance companies — the source of most of the problem (and source of the incredible amounts wasted on health care in this country) — than it does to address the problem itself.

Let’s put the core of the problem in blockquotes here to emphasize it:

We’re spending almost one fifth of our total GDP on health care in this country.  While at the same time, many people don’t have access to good health care, many others experience poor care, and insurance companies are routinely coming between patients and their doctors. And we’re spending well over half a trillion dollars a year in government funds on health care as part of that total spending. Democrats changed this bill to make it more “passable” and in so doing gave some of the very few legitimate right wing complaints against it more meaning while of course serving as yet another example of the influence of big industry lobbying power on capitol hill, to the detriment of taxpayers. And Democrats can’t get one single Republican on board by simply making it a better bill? Or, with a solid majority in both houses without Martha Coakley and the support of the White House, pass a decent bill that a majority of Americans would understand and appreciate?

Heck, even if Democrats took off that last clause (because they have decided that unlike their opponents, they can’t sell or explain anything other than to their “base,” which keeps telling them how brilliant their explanations are, and how “obvious” it all is) do they really think a majority of Americans understand and appreciate the current bill?

Here’s the bottom line:  Instead of focusing on random Senator, write a better bill that addresses the root problems, lowers costs, and does not mandate or dictate to people what to do, and stop allowing Republicans to control them, for once.